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

While the pandemic has affected worker health and safety, for many manufacturers it has also impacted demand, interrupted production, exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains and driven an urgent need to modernize operations.

Drastic 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 U.S. experienced the sharpest decline since 19461, yet daily U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 49 percent.

The new manufacturing practice of Hitachi Vantara,

and its expanded portfolio of digital manufacturing solutions, services and consulting services, looks forward to help manufacturers adapt to these immediate challenges. It also promises to assist manufacturers lay the foundations for the digitalization of health, safety and environment, asset insights, predictive quality and operations optimization.

"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."

Practice Enables Manufacturers Lay Foundations for Digital Transformation
COVID-19 has revealed of the overreliance of many manufacturers on manual processes and operations, and the lack of visibility that many manufacturing line managers and executives have into their supply chains. Both object manufacturers' ability to respond dynamically during times of uncertain demand.

Transformation via Modernization and digitalization of such capabilities will be essential for manufacturers to recover from the pandemic faster 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.

Hitachi's manufacturing innovations, enterprise-class information technology and intellectual property, coupled with deep, industry-specific consulting expertise and proven methods to accelerate time to value, enable customers to operationalize digital innovation in a protected, deployment-agnostic and end-to-end approach. Hitachi Vantara's outcome-focused consulting process breaks down barriers between OT and IT teams to craft comprehensive solutions that deliver transformative outcomes.