In 2024, business struggles have gone beyond the traditional. Decision makers now have to grapple with more than just labor shortages and rising materials costs. Climate change, geopolitical instabilities, regional conflicts, and ever-shifting consumer demands mean that more agile and efficient means of manufacturing management are needed to keep customers (internal and external) happy and design better products and services. Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that may be the answer manufacturing businesses need to digitally transform themselves. In this post, we learn why this digital transformation is essential and the different ways digital thinking practices can help this process. Stay with us as we share real-world use cases where digital transformation has helped manufacturing optimize and refine itself.
Manufacturing Management in the Digital Age
Manufacturing is a thriving industry in the US economy. If we consider it a stand-alone economy, it would be the seventh-largest economy in the world. As manufacturing continues to evolve, it faces numerous challenges. Supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and rising material costs are a few. Also, manufacturing management in the digital age is improved by adding the latest technologies into the mix. In other words, manufacturing 4.0. Manufacturing 4.0 refers to the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry where innovative technologies play a critical role in improving company performance, reducing production cycles, creating better products, and enhancing cultural organization.
What is Design Thinking?
Gone are the days when design was confined only to the visuals. Today, when a company wants to build a new identity for itself, the design has to produce more than a pretty manufacturing logo or brand identity. It has to go deep into the company’s values and processes to keep the user at the forefront of all its decision-making and progress. Design thinking is a highly empathetic, collaborative, iterative problem-solving approach with a user-centric mindset.
Moreover, it involves developing an in-depth understanding of how users interact with a product, service, or process. It uses a multi-stage process to observe and identify problems, glean solutions, and test the best ideas. Since design thinking is iterative, the process goes through multiple cycles of changes and refinement and produces efficient solutions.
Lastly, manufacturing companies can adopt design thinking to create a culture of collaboration and experimentation in their problem-solving processes. It helps them address complex challenges more creatively and develop innovative solutions to their wicked problems.
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Stages of Design Thinking
Design thinking consists of 5 key stages — from researching the problem to creating a workable solution for it.
- Empathizing: Putting yourself in your users’ shoes to understand how they use a product or process and why. This is the research stage. Tools like customer journey maps and feedback surveys etc., are used to gain this understanding and highlight pain points.
- Defining: You organize the information gathered from the previous stage and define the core problem in clear terms. Use your users’ perspective as you state the problem. Don’t cite your goals. State the issue faced by users.
- Ideating: This is the brainstorming stage in which all possible solutions to the problem are presented. No idea is left behind. A comprehensive list of possible actions is formed.
- Prototyping: The best ideas are shortlisted from the earlier list. Each idea is tested going from low- to high-fidelity ones. This ensures resources are utilized intelligently and we don’t too deep with an idea if it doesn’t prove to be the right one.
- Testing: Invite end-users to test the prototype you’ve developed. This step is critical to ensure the solution will be embraced and adopted by users after it’s implemented.
Manufacturing companies with industrial 4.0 goals can use stages of design thinking to simplify complex problem-solving, facilitate digital transformation, and optimize innovation.
Application of Design Thinking to Facilitate Manufacturing 4.0
There are several areas in manufacturing where design thinking can be applied to creative innovative solutions for intricate user issues.
Product design and development
The most obvious example where design thinking has a ready implementation is product design and development. Product design is all about creating and developing products, services, and solutions that help the end user live and work more efficiently. By understanding user behaviors and motivations, product designers can create innovative products that answer core customer issues.
Process optimization
Efficient processes are critical in manufacturing where even a few seconds saved can result in incredible gains. Also, design thinking can help manufacturing plants, inventory management, and factory admins to implement better processes, based on an in-depth understanding of how workers use those processes.
Service design
Service design can benefit immensely from the design thinking approach. It’s an area where prioritizing customer feedback becomes more critical than ever. By always listening to what customers have to say, industrial services can keep their customer experiences engaging and effective.
Design thinking provides a roadmap where service processes can quickly evolve and improve themselves. Break down service processes into smaller components to adapt each to user needs more perfectly. This approach creates holistic user experiences, optimizing each touch point to guide users through all stages of the service funnel and leave a lasting positive impact.
Digital transformation
Manufacturing companies that are serious about their future goals must look at technological transformation as a must. Without it, the business risks its very existence as more agile companies come forward and push a lagging business behind.
However, filtering through the vast amount of technologies available to find the ones that your business needs is a huge undertaking. Design thinking can facilitate this process. By understanding the needs, capabilities, and behaviors of your workforce and other stakeholders, you can choose a tech stack that will work for you.
Worker Safety
Worker safety in the manufacturing process is the application of equipment, technologies, and processes that provide a safe working environment to employees. While worker safety has improved all across the industrial USA, 46,000 workers were injured on average in the manufacturing sector from 2020/21 to 2022/23.
Moreover, design thinking methodologies can help companies create safer working environments for employees by focusing on employee feedback and concerns. Collaborative experimentation can result in discovering equipment, technology, and processes that keep employees safe as they work around complex machinery and materials.
Successful Examples of Design Thinking in Manufacturing Innovation
Design thinking has been helping manufacturing businesses of all sizes to create better products and processes. From robotics to smarter factories and AR implementation to sustainable manufacturing, design thinking has shown its merits in a variety of circumstances.
Smart factories
Smart factories are an integral part of manufacturing 4.0. They are a system of connected devices and machines that continuously collect and share data to optimize manufacturing processes and address issues as they emerge.
- Example: Siemens’ Amberg Electronics Factory (Germany) uses a network of over 1,000 autonomous transportation systems to move components and products between workstations. It also employs a manufacturing execution system (MES) to monitor and control production in real-time.
Robotics
Robots are crucial for manufacturing companies to achieve their industrial 4.0 goals. They speed up the manufacturing process and also make it safer and more precise.
- Example: Samsung Semiconductor extensively uses robotics in its manufacturing.Moreover Equipped with specialized end-effectors, these robotic arms are precise and careful when handling delicate silicone wafers and components, minimizing the risk of damage and defects.
Augmented reality
AR systems work to improve manufacturing by providing real-time, clear, and step-by-step guidance to technicians and workers to help them do their jobs better. Lastly, this leads to optimized processes, fewer mistakes, and assured execution.
- Example: Volkswagon employed design thinking ideas to integrate AR systems into its maintenance and inspection tasks. Technicians wear AR headsets or use AR tablets to consult diagnostic information to learn where the problem lies and how to fix it.
Sustainable manufacturing
Sustainable manufacturing encourages the practice of using available resources with care and intention, aiming for zero-waste goals. Design thinking helps manufacturing companies identify areas that can be improved with sustainable practices.
- Example: Toyota’s Tsutsumi Plant (Japan) is a flagship example of just-in-time inventory management that allows for aligning raw material orders from suppliers with production orders.
Digitized supply chain
A digitized supply chain is an ecosystem of interconnected systems starting from raw material sourcing to delivering the final product to consumers. It is a transparent and efficient system, using resources more sustainably and intelligently, and maximizing outputs.
- Example: Nestle uses IoT sensors throughout its supply chain, from production to distribution. These sensors alert inventory managers when stock levels or low or near expiry.
Conclusion
Innovation in manufacturing lies at the intersection of design thinking and technological advancement. Design thinking is the blueprint you need to identify technologies most needed in your manufacturing management, and the best way to add those technologies into your processes, making sure they help your employees and your employees embrace them fully. Design thinking makes it possible by keeping your employees and stakeholders at the center of all manufacturing development. Lastly, it helps you discover technologies that will help them be more productive at work, safer at work, and more engaged at work.
Author Bio
Evan Brown is a seasoned Digital Marketing Expert with over a decade of experience in the social media arena. Since 2008, he has specialized in design services, user interface planning, branding, and more.