The manufacturing sector is no exemption from its contribution to both developed and emerging countries. The sector encompasses major production activities that are critical to a country, and beholds as a source of innovation, productivity and global trade. When digital transformation is buffeting the industrial sector in many areas, manufacturing sector is subjected to higher degrees of disruption, utilizing IoT capabilities. As we head towards 2020, this sector in particular might become the early adopters of emerging technologies centred on AI, 5G adoption, and 3D printing technologies. These three technologies will bring significant transformation on how business operates and thereby paves way for new revenue streams for the industrial manufacturing.

Most of the manufacturers would have already adopted some kind of automation processes. While automation endows to streamline the process involved, Artificial intelligence capabilities create new processes.

While automation endows to streamline the process involved, Artificial intelligence capabilities create new processes. This enables companies to predict potential issues associated with the operations before it can happen as well as formulate prime AI-based strategies that could cater to specific customer tastes. By leveraging AIs on right data sets, manufacturers will be able to regulate their demand projections for the essential product and gain insights. This could further contribute to the way companies have been approaching demand planning and forecasting.

As per the new trends, the movement of manufacturers from one end of a value chain towards the customer can be established based on the model of servitization. Whereby, they can deliver added services along with the product or engaged in selling products as a service on a subscription model. This provides a gateway for the manufacturer in selling their product through a channel to distributors, which may also give support services directly over its lifecycle. Thereby, improving the customer experience in the business-to-business-to-customer model gains more traction for its direct communication between the manufacturer and end customer.

By the meaningful utilization of 5G technology, it is expected to drive automation of industrial processes. A number of technological benefits, right from ultra low-latency and ubiquitous connectivity could back essential sensors on machines. This empowers an inter-connected smart machine automation that talks to each other and feeds on data. Machine learning capabilities integrated with this technology could result in more opportunities in cost saving options and efficiency quotients. In the coming days, manufacturers will use technology to build process, rather than optimize. Thus, technological theories and speculations that drove 2019 will likely power applications in manufacturing sector in the year 2020.