Hitachi Vantara expands digital manufacturing services

Hitachi Vantara, the digital infrastructure and solutions subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd, has announced an expanded set of offerings to help manufacturers accelerate Manufacturing 4.0 initiatives and to assist with safely restarting production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For many manufacturers, the pandemic has not only affected worker health and safety, it has impacted demand, interrupted production, exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains and driven an urgent need to modernise operations.

Dramatic variations in production capacity and demand illustrate the new stresses being placed on manufacturing supply chains and production planning: after the onset of COVID-19, industrial production in the United States experienced the steepest decline since 1946, yet daily US e-commerce sales jumped 49%.

Hitachi Vantara says that its new manufacturing practice and its expanded portfolio of digital manufacturing solutions, services and consulting services aims to help manufacturers adapt to these immediate challenges. It also promises to help manufacturers lay the foundations for the digitalisation of health, safety and environment (HS&E), asset insights, predictive quality and operations optimisation.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing a litany of challenges for manufacturers that highlight how important unlocking data and digital industrial innovation is to the industry’s future,” said James Destro, General Manager, Manufacturing Practice, Hitachi Vantara. “With our powerful IT and OT experience, Hitachi Vantara can uniquely inspire, envision, architect and accelerate digital transformation that solves today’s challenges and prepares manufacturers for the challenges of tomorrow.”

Worker health and safety are primary concerns for manufacturers restarting their operations during COVID-19. The expanded portfolio of digital solutions for manufacturing from Hitachi Vantara includes health, safety and environment solutions leveraging Lumada Video Insights technologies which can be utilised for applications such as elevated body temperature identification and hand-washing detection. Thermal cameras and lidar technology can detect the temperature of a person from a distance, so that workers can be screened non-intrusively for symptoms of COVID-19 and workspaces can be monitored for compliance with distancing recommendations.

COVID-19 has also revealed many manufacturers’ overreliance on manual processes and operations, and the lack of visibility that many manufacturing line managers and executives have into their supply chains. Both hinder manufacturers’ ability to respond dynamically during times of uncertain demand.

Modernising and digitalising such capabilities will be essential for manufacturers to recover from the pandemic quickly, and to create the more agile and resilient manufacturing operations needed in the future. This is another focus of Hitachi Vantara’s new manufacturing practice, according to the company.

Hitachi Vantara has also announced the expansion of its Lumada Manufacturing Insights solutions with new domains that help manufacturers address health, safety and environment, supply chain optimisation, asset insights, predictive quality and operations optimisation.

Lumada Manufacturing Insights is a portfolio of IIoT solutions that the company says will empower manufacturers to improve operations through data-driven insights. Benefits such as improved overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), greater operations efficiency and product quality optimisation may be achieved.

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