Are You Prepared for
Next Gen Manufacturing?Posted on - 12:47 PM on Fri, Feb 08, 2013

The age of the "Industrial Internet" has arrived, and to be successful, companies will need to change the way they do business. In a new IndustryWeek article, Infor's Warren Smith explains that "since the downturn of 2008, the U.S. manufacturing economy has been making stellar yet uncharacteristic improvements."
 
Smith is a senior industry consultant and business strategy architect for the automotive and aftermarket industries at Infor. In part one of a two-part thought-leadership series he wrote for IndustryWeek, Smith lists the key factors of next generation manufacturing:

• Robotics and automation will reach into the mid-market and become pervasive.
• Additive and 3D manufacturing methods will enable rapid production of custom low volume products without the need for tooling and pre-production process.
• Software will become embedded into more products—even ones that historically were just 'parts.'
• Connected and sensor enabled machines will become more pervasive and generate more data than ever before.
• Analytics will play an increasing role.

There's much more. Read "Are You Prepared for the Next Generation of Manufacturing?" on IndustryWeek.com.