A big obstacle to digitalizing industry could soon be a thing of the past. The Manufacturing-X initiative makes a new type of data exchange possible between industrial partners – innovative, self-determined, and trust-based.
Manufacturing-X was launched as part of the Industry 4.0 platform, with the aim of promoting digital ecosystems and establishing an international standard for data exchange. It is an industry-wide initiative of the German government with various projects for different industrial sectors.
“The realization that the digitalization of industry is inevitable has become the norm over the past few years,” says Georg Kube, head of Industry Data Ecosystems at SAP SE. “A variety of use cases for different industries and new business models have been developed. They are successful – but only as long as companies work with other companies with which they already have a close partnership.”
“The most well-known of the [Manufacturing-X] projects is certainly Catena-X for the automotive sector,” Kube says. “The common aim of all these projects is to establish a new form of data exchange.”
For example, an automaker that wants to digitally integrate its direct suppliers typically requests all the data about the supplied parts from its partners, and the suppliers usually feel comfortable providing this data because of the trust that has grown over the years between the partners.
But it’s different when data is needed from companies without a direct business relationship. “A typical example is the determination of a vehicle’s CO2 footprint,” Kube says. “Suddenly, information about the CO2 footprint of the smallest plastic parts is needed, which may come from companies in the supply chain with which a company has never had direct contact. It’s not easy to access that data.”
Trust Is the Catalyst
Companies are often very hesitant to share data freely. And for good reason: potential inferences about their cost structure or the nature of their production can be drawn from the data.
“On the one hand, as companies, we hesitate to give out our data. But on the other hand, we rely on the data of others in order for digitalization scenarios to be successfully implemented,” Kube explains. “We want to address this problem within the framework of Manufacturing-X through a new [approach to] industrial data sharing.”
“The promise,” Kube continues, “is that the digitalization, which we can currently complete up to 70%, can be fully implemented.”
Information Transfer – But Secure
“What companies lack the most today is knowledge,” Kube says. “We constantly hear from SAP customers that they would pay to find out what their own customers are doing with the products they have sold to them.”
For example, a manufacturer of robot grippers receives few insights after selling its product about where the grippers are located and what they are used for. If this were not the case, the manufacturer could make much more informed decisions about which generation of products the market needs, or whether a completely new model needs to be developed.
However, customers have concerns that this information could lead to inferences about the nature of their production and the finished product, or that this type of application might be prohibited.
With Manufacturing-X, a scenario has been created in which data sovereignty remains with the owner of the data, but the data can be provided within a narrow framework with a legal and technical structure that prevents abuse. This is the essence of a whole range of use cases in areas such as manufacturing-as-a-service, sustainability, and others.
“These use cases basically exist independently of Manufacturing-X,” Kube explains. “Most of them are neither new nor original. They just could never be fully implemented because trust in data exchange was lacking – and Manufacturing-X finally creates the conditions for this.”
SAP’s Role
As an enterprise software company, SAP has a strong interest in completing the digitization of its customers.
“The digitalization of industry works very well with SAP products,” says Heiko Flohr, head of Product Management, SAP for Discrete Industries & Industry Networks, at SAP SE. “Most of the world’s leading companies use SAP in some way to digitize its next-generation processes. Therefore, it is clear from our perspective that we must support and drive this emerging industry standard for data exchange.”
Kube notes that medium-sized companies in particular often suffer from the unavailability of data. “For this customer group, we offer a comprehensive, easily consumable application portfolio with GROW with SAP,” he says. “The goal is to establish industrial data sharing according to Manufacturing-X standards as a solid part of this portfolio and enable our customers to collaborate more effectively and trustfully with their supply chains.”
Within Manufacturing-X, new sovereign data exchange formats are to be created for the industry, based on European Union values such as transparency, controllability, portability, and interoperability. “We work very collaboratively and with a focus on implementation in various industry-specific initiatives to make this vision a reality,” says Mirko Paul, head of Industry Cloud Architecture at SAP. “Based on state-of-the-art, cloud-based architectures and the scalable technology standard of SAP Business Technology Platform, we ensure that these new standards are compatible with SAP applications from the outset and pre-integrated for relevant business processes.”
At the same time, SAP opens its own products and applications that are already on the market. Products and solutions such as SAP Digital Manufacturing and products in the areas of supply chain and sustainability are to be equipped with connectors that will allow them to work with this new standard.
