The Promised Land

Written by: Adrian Jennings, CTO of real-time location intelligence solutions

When I was a budding rocket scientist playing with missiles in the wilder parts of England, it always seemed to me that my colleagues across the pond in the US had it so much better. I imagined they were better trained, better resourced and altogether lived in some kind of Promised Land. When I eventually moved to the US I’m not sure whether I was gratified or disappointed to find that they had all the same constraints and issues we faced in the UK. In fact, we had pioneered some techniques that the US was keen to learn.

I imagine it must sometimes feel the same working in a manufacturing plant and reading in the press all about cyber-connected systems, Industry 4.0 and the like. It must often feel like everyone else has better technology and better processes than you, and surely that means they are much farther ahead.

Well, just as I discovered when moving to the US: they don’t have anything better than you, and they aren’t any further ahead. Ubisense’s recent survey of smart technologies in manufacturing revealed exactly that. Whereas a few pioneers have adopted advanced manufacturing technologies, most plants still rely on mostly manual processes and have a distinct lack of operational visibility.

The results of the survey are available in a white paper, which also discusses a path to better visibility and better processes – one that doesn’t require huge technological leaps into some imagined Promised Land. Have a look at the white paper: http://bit.ly/1vpRUPm. You might be comforted to know that many others face the same problems you do. And who knows – maybe you’re the one who’s ahead?