The year 2017 is going to see many changes in product engineering and efficient solutions. Some simultaneous parallel research endeavours are underway and the cumulative result of this vast technological advancement will lead to changes in production engineering.
The introduction of smart and automated systems, bigger and better machinery, and intelligent designing techniques all are contributing factors to the change that this year is witness to as far as manufacturing engineering is concerned.
Top 10 such trends and predictions for the year 2017
1. Artificial Intelligence makes it big
It takes a little time for the fact to sink in that machines are replacing human contribution in almost all industries. Machines can now record, analyze, and act upon data that they can automatically collect. With machine learning and digital memory, soon there will be completely automated manufacturing systems and product engineering services for the complete development life cycle of any product.
2. Changed pricing policies
With innovative manufacturing, a shift from fixed fees to variable fees with condition-based pricing and maintenance is going to be the norm pretty soon.
3. Mining and analysis of data
With concepts like IoT, a huge amount of data will be made available. However, companies providing product engineering services need to decide on how to process and utilize that data. The amount of archival data already available, if combined, would require new approaches to data mining and analysis.
4. Employment
the employment scenario is going to change a lot very shortly, starting from 2017. With embedded systems and intelligent machines handling most of the workload, the required skillset for employment is going to change a lot. Offshore software development is going to be in demand while people manually handling heavy machinery might be having a hard time.
5. Higher productivity
With automated machines, precise and perfect designs, and efficient manufacturing tools, the productivity of all industries can be expected to grow.
6. Higher cybersecurity protocols
As the basis of intelligent systems and machines is communication over the internet, new reforms in cybersecurity are expected, some of which have already been put into effect.
7. Digital thread
The collaborating parties for any manufacturing and production chain have to share a digital information chain. Complete transparency in every step of the production procedure can be expected from every collaborating party.
8. Aggressive expansion
Industries are going to expand aggressively. Every industry will slowly transform into a multidisciplinary one.
9. All round development
Adapting to the new technologies is not going to be enough. Changes in the thought process, in management, administration, and work culture are necessary to make the transition to new generation manufacturing successful.
10. Dependency on software
Whether it is analytical software design or embedded system software, the dependency on software is going to be alarming, and the trend has already started. It can be noted from the increased demand for Offshore software development amongst manufacturing companies.
