Enhancing Supply Chain Operations Using IoT and Digital Twin
• Organizational change management : Adopting new technologies and data-driven processes requires change management and upskilling programs to get organizational buy-in across departments .
• Costs vs benefits : The upfront installation and integration costs associated with implementing IoT / digital twins can seem high at first but are outweighed by the transformational benefits over time as supply chains operate smarter .
Integrating IoT-enabled smart sensors with digital twin simulations offers immense potential to improve the supply chain solutions .
Let us look at one specific example : Deloitte ’ s Project George which is named after George Devol , the inventor of industrial robotics .
Figure
5-1 shows the high-level functional blocks of the solution . It is a classic example of IT-OT ( Information Technology-Operations Technology ) integration . The sales order typically originates in the CRM system and makes its way to the ERP and manufacturing system . In the case of discrete manufacturing , the sales order drives the manufacturing work order in the factory to produce the specific product or batch of products . The integration of the IoT system such as production monitoring helps to ensure that there is no risk to the order execution . Predictive maintenance and health monitoring reduces factory downtime and risks to the manufacturing and delivery process .
Sales Order Entry Execute Work Order
Monitor Incidents and Machine Health
Realtime Supply Chain Process Dashboard / Analytics
Complete Workorder and Update Inventory
Repair Machine and Update Machine Status
Figure 5-1 : Deloitte ’ s Project George for IT-OT integration .
It is important to realize that IoT and digital twin systems eventually become part of the larger IT ecosystem at enterprises , after they are in production use after the stabilization and hyper care state . As a result , the IT-OT integration considerations are key and should be kept as part of the initial architecture and design . Let us look at the architecture components used in Project George in Figure 5-1 . Project George focuses on ecosystem collaboration to drive digital supply chain solutions .
Journal of Innovation 11