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The industrial sector is at the center of the digital transformation into smart manufacturing. This transformation has moved from a choice to an imperative for growth and sustainability post-COVID-19.
Today, manufacturing enterprises are ramping up strategic planning exercises to bring transformative technologies to facilities. The goal is to improve productivity, increase sustainability, and lower operational costs using modern technologies such as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), augmented reality and virtual reality (AR and VR), and the application of artificial intelligence (AI).
However, fulfilling such plans presents challenges due to the diversity across individual facilities including its people, processes, and technologies. Each facility is considered an edge of an enterprise. Deploying new capabilities at the edge by enabling modern technologies is the focus of edge computing that is aided by Information Technology (IT).
Edge computing at each facility must meet three main objectives:
1. Align with business enterprise strategy around smart manufacturing
2. Create a path for long-term management and support
3. Support of diverse edge infrastructure with a set of best practices and guidelines
This paper addresses how to align individual facilities for deployment of newer edge capabilities while ensuring the enterprise-level vision of smart manufacturing is realized.