Low-code platform - contributing to the super-connected manufacturing enterprise

In an era of skills shortages, value chain disruptions, changing consumer behavior, new business models and fierce competition, manufacturers are under unprecedented pressure to reduce costs and shorten time to market while keeping up with the pace of innovation. The influence of business technicians continues to rise, and companies are paying more attention to the possibility of non-professional IT employees participating in digital construction. Super-connected manufacturing companies can use the company's intelligent systems and artificial intelligence to enhance the agility of planning, production and after-sales support.

What is a Hyperconnected Enterprise?

Data-driven agile enterprises are based on hyperconnectivity, connecting people, devices, systems and processes to enable smooth flow of data between different processes in an organization. This is a high requirement for many companies, especially those with information silos and heterogeneous systems. In the past, each department within an organization would make decisions independently of each other, and information silos are a product of that era. At that time, the workflow could be "series" rather than "parallel", and information was mainly conveyed through documents or department exchange meetings, but this method is no longer applicable to the real-time collaboration concept and technology-assisted processes between the design, manufacturing, procurement and supply chain operations departments of modern production. With the increasing integration and softwareization of products, the boundaries between enterprises, suppliers and customers are becoming blurred.

Scientifically coordinate design changes

In a typical design change case, the engineering department is the first department to meet the customer's demand changes. They must confirm whether such requirements can be met and find the required solutions. The engineer's decision will have a great impact on various downstream links, such as modifying the production line, launching new equipment, changing the production plan, adjusting logistics, purchasing new parts, etc.

The best time for all parties to get involved in new customer requirements is when they are first requested. Modern design, manufacturing resource planning, scheduling, and procurement tools are all created to help with collaboration. Therefore, the manufacturing engineering department can grasp the customer's change requirements in advance before receiving the new product design; similarly, the production department and supply chain team can also be prepared for the changes and adjustments that occur next.

The low-code platform is like glue that "glue" isolated core systems together in an easy and agile way. For example, Siemens' low-code applications Product View 360 and Plan For Every Part can provide visibility and collaboration capabilities for engineering, manufacturing, and production departments without disrupting core systems.

Provide uninterrupted service

The "as a service" wave sweeping the industry shows how low-code platforms can bring more benefits to hyperconnected enterprises, which can move from building and maintaining products for single customers to subscription models and multi-user models. Enterprises that transition to the "as a service" model can provide customers with rich digital experiences, such as signing service level agreements online, managing customers' service usage, remote support, and one-click ordering of consumables.

From design and manufacturing to sales and finance, the transition to an “as a service” model affects every aspect of the business. To make the transition smooth, every affected department needs to be involved in planning and execution. To achieve the agility required for this enterprise-wide collaboration, companies need to design applications that work together and can be easily extended and customized, while keeping core systems clean. By creating these applications through a one-stop platform, manufacturing companies can cultivate internal development capabilities, bring consistency to organizational change management, and support system maintainability to achieve economies of scale more quickly.

Low-code eliminates the burden of software development to a certain extent. It attracts more non-technical personnel to participate in application development through simple drag-and-drop functions such as Siemens low-code platform, thereby reducing the burden on IT departments. With platforms such as Siemens low-code, enterprises can quickly try and coherently transform to the "as a service" model, avoiding complex IT projects and delivery cycles, while maintaining existing business models and supporting systems.

Connecting to heterogeneous data sources

The benefits of low-code are not only to improve the ease of development and empower business personnel, it can also become the foundation of data integration and software modernization strategies. Applications built with low-code tools can build "bridges" between databases and industrial system islands through software connectors, allowing new applications to access data from multiple external databases and systems. Enterprises can try to build a simple application first. If the application works well, they can connect other data sources to increase its value and bring the required agility to supporting systems.

In addition, business personnel can use low-code development tools to put their professional domain knowledge into practice without having to bear the burden of complex IT project cycles. For example, when the workshop needed to regulate social distance due to the epidemic, a business person built a workplace management application, Workplace Manager, in just a few days.

Adopting a one-stop low-code platform within the enterprise not only ensures that applications that can run in any environment are built in a unified location, but also solves the "shadow IT" problem. Since the tools selected by the business department are often not recognized and supported by the IT department, shadow IT may become a "big worry" for the technical management. Even if companies pay more attention to recruiting technically proficient and slightly technical business personnel, shadow IT has not disappeared. Therefore, manufacturing companies need to reconstruct and innovate the collaborative potential brought by shadow IT, and they also need a technology that allows shadow IT to operate smoothly within the enterprise, and low-code application development platforms are such a technology.

Hyperconnectivity extends beyond the enterprise

The first applications built on low-code platforms will expose inconsistencies in data sources and legacy applications that need to be modernized. Manufacturing companies often have hundreds of systems, and using low-code or no-code applications to connect these systems can help IT departments sort out which data sources and their related applications are more coherent and reliable, enabling IT departments to prioritize key strategies. On the other hand, the benefits of low-code still exist even if the product is already in the hands of the customer. For example, a car company discovered that there was a defect in the parts delivered to the customer. If data was extracted from traditional tables and legacy systems to track the location of the product in the factory, it would take weeks. Through low-code applications that are already connected to relevant systems, companies can quickly obtain data and contact customers. Records of the incident on the application can prevent defective parts from being sent to customers again in the future.

With the support of low-code tools, hyper-connected manufacturing companies are better able to quickly modernize technologies and processes, helping the company to grow and realize innovation strategies.