COVID-19 Impact on Pharmaceutical Packaging in Chemicals and Materials Industry

COVID-19 Impact on Global Smart Manufacturing Market in ICT Industry

  • ICT
  • Jan 22, 2021

Analysis On Impact of Covid-19 On The Market

The pandemic originated from China, marking its beginning in 2019 and has been continuously spreading by then to all over the world, so far 218 countries and territories, and 2 international conveyances have been affected with COVID-19, U.S. being on the top with cases reaching to about 15 million, followed by India, Brazil and then by many European countries such as Russia, France, Italy and others. The COVID-19 cases are reaching to the big named countries with strong dominance in the global market which has adversely affected the economy globally. The spread of Corona virus (COVID-19) has led to the global recession, many companies are being bound to take stringent actions of laying of their employees, small business are being shut, manufacturing facilities are being put on hold. There has been a disruption in supply chain of many industries due to restriction in logistics and closing of manufacturing facilities. In addition, the slowdown in economy has lowered the spending capability of individuals and people are saving money for emergencies.

The World Bank stated that the global economy is expected to reduce by 5.2% in 2020. Emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) are expected to decrease by 2.5% and the economic activity in advanced economies may get reduced by 7% in 2020.

The U.S. witnessed a decline of 4.8% on an annualized basis in the first quarter Q1-2020. In addition, the slowdown in economy has also lowered the spending capability of individuals and people are saving money for emergencies.

The Latin America region is affected by COVID-19 in both human and economic terms. The IMF World Economic Outlook stated a decrease of 8.1% in Gross domestic product (GDP) of Latin America in 2020.

Smart manufacturing is a combination of various technologies and solutions that respond in real time to meet changing demands and conditions. These technologies help in optimizing the manufacturing process and increase the efficiency of the factory output. Smart manufacturing facilities are integrated with various advanced technologies such as Artificial intelligence, Blockchain in manufacturing, Industrial internet of things (IIoT), Robotics, Condition monitoring and Cyber security. The smart manufacturing is driven by the use and analyses of data. The data is collected, analyzed and interpreted in order to perform the required process or action and therefore cyber security becomes an essential part of the whole process.

Robots are being highly adopted in various countries to increase the automation in manufacturing facilities and the comparison is made by calculating the number of industrial robots as a share of manufacturing workers.

Robots per 10,000 manufacturing workersIt is also estimated that about 42% of total task hours are expected to be completed by machines by 2022.

IMPACT ON DEMAND AND SUPPLY CHAIN AND LONG TERM STRATEGY ADOPTED BY MANUFACTURERS OR STEPS TAKEN

The pandemic is bound to bring new trends in the market such as increase of digitalization, increasing automation, high adoption of e-commerce and low dependency on human labor.  The companies require taking strategic decision in order to sustain their development in this pandemic crisis. Companies have delayed any sort of acquisitions and cut short the capital expenditure in order to maintain their financial conditions, in addition they also need to set the sales projection so as to limit their production and avoid any extra spending. Companies need to align their strategies with the changing market; they need to operate the factories according to the present safety norms of government in order to bring back the production back to pace. Companies need to innovate and develop technologies according to the changing trends of the society.

As the pandemic prevails companies have limited the number of workers in the manufacturing facilities. This can act as a growing factor for incorporating automation to reduce the usage of workers. The industries can follow the path of industry 4.0 and with increasing automation the need for smart manufacturing facilities will increase. It is seen that about 42% of total task hours are expected to be completed by machines by 2022.

Moreover, there is a lack of skilled workforce for doing the appropriate job. About 40% of the employers in Europe were seen to be having trouble in finding the right candidate for the require job in 2013. The shortfall of workforce increases the demand of more advanced technologies that can limit the requirement of manual labor.

The incorporation of industry 4.0 will be the major driving factor for the growth of smart manufacturing facilities. Industry 4.0 is being adopted at a faster rate which is leading to increased productivity. It is seen that about 72% of businesses will be digitized by 2020 from that of 33% in 2016. Moreover, digital transformation is improving the efficiency of value chain with a digital platform of interaction. About 70 percent of organizations are working on digital transformation strategy. The high growth of digitalization in the pandemic will further increase the demand of smart manufacturing.

The pandemic has boosted the digital transformation of industries; companies are focusing more on digital platform to interact with their clients and customers. People working from home are also more reliable on digital sources. The automation and digitalization has been boosted during the pandemic, however, due to several restrictions to logistics and implementation of lockdown the automotive sector has faced and adverse effect on the demand.

The increasing digitalization during the pandemic has also led to increasing cyber-attacks and malware attacks. The cybercrime increased by 600% Due To COVID-19 Pandemic. The increasing cybercrime because of pandemic can increase the demand for automotive cyber security solutions.

The demand of smart manufacturing is highly boosted by the integration of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). The high use of internet and smart devices over the years has increased the use of IoT and most of the devices are being connected with internet for easy controlling and monitoring of devices.

IoT Use Cases with the Most Investment, in USD billionHowever, supply chain for the smart manufacturing was adversely affected as several manufacturing facilities were closed down, labor was cut short and transportation and logistics were restricted. For instance, in August 2020, The Raymond Corporation, a subsidiary of Toyota Industries Corporation engaged in providing material handling and intralogistics products and solution was shut down due the presence of COVID-19 cases in the facility.

The demand for advance technologies to be incorporated in facilities was affected as the spending and expenditure of companies was limited. The change in the demand led to disruption in supply chain and companies need to re-evaluate the production as per the changing demand.

Conclusion

As the Covid-19 prevails the initial period saw a disruption in both supply and demand of smart manufacturing market. Most of the manufacturing facilities were closed bringing down the requirement of smart manufacturing technologies. In the longer term, there will be need of creating greater flexibility and responsiveness by digitizing processes, developing greater situational awareness through cloud-based analytics and internet-of-things (IoT) initiatives, and empowering workers with new digital skills.

Across locations and supply chains, manufacturers need to use analytics in order to build redundancy into workforces and supplier bases, identification of weak or growing demand, and pivot rapidly in order to make new products to preserve the business and restore revenues. However, the increasing digitalization will also increase the need of digital security and companies need to work more on cyber threats to protect their data.

The pandemic has boosted the role of automation in all the industries and with increasing growth in e-commerce the efficiency of manufacturing facility needs to be increased. This is surely pumped in by the use of automation in manufacturing facilities. The use of automated guided vehicle has increased in manufacturing facilities and that has led to increased productivity, in the time when there is a shortage of labor, automated guided vehicles will be highly adopted by the manufacturers.

“With AGVs, manufacturers can improve the production process change their manufacturing lines into a flexible and modular production. AGVs are the backbone of the digital factory,”

  • Industry Expert