Driving innovation, digital transformation and scale while also supporting sustainability and reskilling efforts

@WEF are Driving Impact in the Fourth Industrial Revolution #FairerWorld #4IR 

The World Economic Forum welcomes 18 new factories to its Global Lighthouse Network of advanced manufacturers that are showing leadership in applying the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to drive operational and environmental impact.

Now with 44 factories, the network, established in 2018, serves as a platform to develop, replicate and scale up innovations, creating opportunities for cross-company learning and collaboration and for setting new benchmarks for the global manufacturing community.

The goal of this community is to share and learn from best practices, support new partnerships and help other manufacturers deploy technology, adopt sustainable practices and transform their workforces.

Shared Learning Journey

“Not only does the Global Lighthouse Network celebrate leaders and best practices in effective technological deployment, but more important, it also creates a shared learning journey for the industry to accelerate the transition to the future of manufacturing,” said Francisco Betti, Head of Shaping the Future of Advanced Manufacturing and Production, World Economic Forum.

“This transition must focus on sustainability and efforts dedicated to reskilling and empowering people.”

The Global Lighthouse Network is managed in collaboration with McKinsey & Company.

“The 44 lighthouses are trailblazers in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing is often the starting point for innovating a new, company-wide operating system powered by the latest technology to achieve new levels of sustainability, agility, speed-to-market, and productivity. The value doesn’t stop at the factory door: instead, lighthouses find impact across the entire end-to-end value chain, from suppliers through to customers.

“This year, we believe the Global Lighthouse Network has found the secret sauce to overcome pilot purgatory and generate impact at scale. Moreover, by now the frontrunners have two to three years’ head start compared to their peers. That should set off alarm bells for all manufacturers that are still busy trying to prove technology’s value instead of using technology to change the way they work,” said Enno de Boer, Partner and Head of McKinsey & Company’s Global Manufacturing Practice.

A new white paper, “Global Lighthouse Network: Insights from the Forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” published today (10 Jan), outlines some of the main findings and impacts.

The 18 new factories bring increased diversity to the network, with new countries, including Brazil, Japan and Singapore, as well as new industries, including semiconductors and agricultural equipment. Almost one-half of the new lighthouses are end-to-end factories, driving value outside the four walls of the factory to effect change throughout their value chains. The new lighthouses are:

Asia

Baoshan Iron & Steel (Shanghai, China): This 40-year-old factory adopted digitization early. Its extensive implementation of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics has allowed it to maintain its industrial competitiveness in the digital era, creating value of $50 million.
 
Foton Cummins (Beijing, China): Foton Cummins has self-deployed internet of things and artificial intelligence throughout its end-to-end product life cycle in its design, production and after service. By doing so, it has improved product quality and customer satisfaction by 40%.
 
GE Healthcare (Hino, Japan): This GE factory, with more than 30 years’ experience of lean manufacturing, used Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to transform into digital lean manufacturing. This has resulted in achieving the next level of performance, for example, cutting costs by 30% and reducing cycle times by 46%.
 
Haier (Shenyang, China): The Haier Shenyang refrigerator factory is an example of a user-centric mass customization model. Achieved by deploying a scalable digital platform that connects end-to-end with suppliers and users, it has improved direct labour productivity by 28%.
 
Hitachi (Hitachi, Japan): By leveraging a range of industrial internet of things technologies and data analytics in engineering, production and maintenance operations, Hitachi Omika Works has reduced the lead time of core products by 50% without undermining quality.
 
Infineon (Singapore): Enabled by a digital backbone and people development, Infineon has used data, advanced analytics and automation in its manufacturing plant and supply chain network to reduce direct labour costs by 30% and improve capital efficiency by 15%.
 
Johnson & Johnson DePuy Synthes (Suzhou, China): This site has scaled up standardized digital solutions developed in other Johnson & Johnson sites to drive performance improvements, including increasing productivity by 15%.
 
Micron (Singapore): This semiconductor fabrication facility has integrated big data infrastructure and industrial internet of things to implement artificial intelligence and data science solutions, raising product quality standards and doubling the speed at which new products are ramped.
 
Procter & Gamble (Taicang, China): This young site leveraged Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to build the first lights-off operation in P&G Asia and connect its E2E supply chain. It increased productivity by 2.5x, boosted its production agility enabling e-commerce growth and improved employee satisfaction.
 
Weichai (Weifang, China): Weichai digitally transformed its entire end-to-end value chain to accurately understand customer needs and reduce costs. Powered by artificial intelligence and internet of vehicles, it shortened its R&D cycle by 20% and improved operating costs by 35%.

Europe

AGCO (Marktoberdorf, Germany): By combining digital solutions with intelligent line design, AGCO/Fendt can manufacture nine series of tractors – ranging from 72 to 500 horsepower – on a single assembly line with a batch size of one. This has increased productivity by 24% and reduced cycle time by 60%.
 
GSK (Ware, UK): This pharmaceutical site has applied Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies throughout its manufacturing operation, exploiting advanced analytics and neural networks to use existing datasets. It has improved line speed by 21%, reduced downtime and increased yield, delivering an overall equipment effectiveness improvement of 10%.
 
Henkel (Düsseldorf, Germany): Henkel has developed a cloud-based data platform that connects more than 30 sites and more than 10 distribution centres in real time. This helps meet growing customer and consumer expectations on service and sustainability, while achieving double-digit cost and inventory reductions.

Latin America

Groupe Renault (Curitiba, Brazil): Renault Curitiba approached Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies with a focus on improving employee accountability and E2E connectivity, engaging its workforce and developing a connected ecosystem throughout value-chain players including dealers, customers and workers. Results include improving its productivity by 18%, without major capital deployment.
 
MODEC (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil): Leveraging advanced analytics for predictive maintenance, a digital twin of its process plant, and a proprietary data platform to accelerate development and enable the exponential scale-up of new algorithms across oil production vessels, this offshore facility has reduced downtime by 65%.

Middle East

Petkim (Izmir, Turkey): This 35-year-old petrochemical facility embarked on a digital journey to drive value creation. Self-developed artificial intelligence algorithms optimize process and product pricing by analysing billions of production scenarios, resulting in an earnings before interest and taxes improvement of more than 20%.
 
Unilever (Dubai, UAE): In a drive to improve cost competitiveness, a local entrepreneurial team established a factory data lake and developed and deployed at scale Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases. With limited investment and in a short period of time it achieved a cost reduction of more than 25%.

North America

Johnson & Johnson Vision Care (Jacksonville, USA): Vision Care has digitally connected its value chain end-to-end from suppliers to consumers, as well as implementing reconfigurable manufacturing, to achieve double-digit cost reduction and sales growth. 

World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2020 will take place on 21-24 January 2020 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. The meeting brings together more than 3,000 global leaders from politics, government, civil society, academia, the arts and culture as well as the media. Convening under the theme, Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World, participants will focus on defining new models for building sustainable and inclusive societies in a plurilateral world.

The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting brings together governments, international organizations, business, civil society, media, culture, foremost experts and the young generation from all over the world, at the highest level and in representative ways. It engages some 50 heads of state and government, more than 300 ministerial-level government participants, and business representation at the chief executive officer and chair level. 

Notes to editors:
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