More Factories from India Join the World Economic Forum’s Global Lighthouse Network
#WorldEconomicForum #GlobalLighthouseNetwork“The Global Lighthouse Network exemplifies the power of digital transformation. Lighthouses are pioneering a path to unprecedented global impact, strategically weaving innovation throughout their expansive network – sculpting both a sustainable future and an era of transformative and lasting change.” - Kiva Allgood, Head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains
December 2023 : The World Economic Forum has recently announced that 21 forward-thinking manufacturers including four Indian organizations have joined the Global Lighthouse Network, a community of 153 world-leading manufacturing facilities and value chains using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to increase operational performance and environmental sustainability.
With rapid technological advances, escalating geopolitical tensions and accelerating climate change uncovering supply-chain vulnerabilities globally, these companies are employing advanced technologies and innovative approaches to boost productivity and sustainability in their operations.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are revolutionizing production globally and each Lighthouse member has found significant impact in at least one, and sometimes dozens, of advanced AI practical use cases. The result: 85 percent of the Lighthouses saw a less than 10 percent revenue loss during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, while only 14 percent of other manufacturers can say the same.
The network also published a white paper - Global Lighthouse Network: Adopting AI with Speed and Scale - showcasing how Lighthouses have built the capabilities needed to scale the impact of AI on people, the planet and business performance, and how other manufacturers could join them on the path to ensuring social impact and improved business performance.
“The Global Lighthouse Network exemplifies the power of digital transformation” said Kiva Allgood, Head of the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Supply Chains. “Lighthouses are pioneering a path to unprecedented global impact, strategically weaving innovation throughout their expansive network – sculpting both a sustainable future and an era of transformative and lasting change.
Four lighthouses with outstanding environmental footprint reductions are gaining the additional designation of Sustainability Lighthouses. These global leaders are gaining momentum in achieving their sustainability pledges and greater operational competitiveness by realizing the potential of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies in operations.
“Lighthouses see a bright future. They see a world where scaling AI, Generative AI and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies can unlock not only business value, but also sustainability, employee experience, and resilience objectives,” said Enno de Boer, Global Head of Operations Technology at McKinsey & Company.
The 21 Manufacturing Lighthouses and four Sustainability Lighthouses represent eight countries: China, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and the United States. The main trends among these Lighthouses include an unprecedented level of digital maturity, the rapid proliferation of machine intelligence, and transformation programmes that execute at-scale deployments from the outset; 82 percent of the Lighthouses cite “scale” as the most important design consideration for digital use cases and transformation programmes.
“The network is a platform to develop and scale up innovations and plays an important role in infusing digital technologies into our global operations”, says Dirk Holbach, Chief Supply Chain Officer at Henkel Consumer Brands. “Additionally, it creates opportunities for cross-company learning and collaboration across multiple industry sectors in order to set new benchmarks for the global manufacturing community.”
Sustainability Lighthouse
Schneider Electric (Hyderabad, India): Schneider Electric’s Hyderabad site aims to be zero carbon on Scope 1 and 2 by 2030, based on a strong Fourth Industrial Revolution core. This includes an E2E closed-loop system with CO2 tracking for strategic suppliers. The system is powered by real-time data generation and cloud analytics for all facility assets that interlink with shop-floor operations using an IIoT-enabled equalizer and AI-based predictive monitoring. This has led to a 59 percent reduction in energy consumption, 61 percent decrease in CO2 emissions, 57 percent cut in water consumption and a 64 percent reduction in normalized waste generation.
Factory Lighthouses
ACG Capsules (Pithampur, India): To stay ahead of the curve in an intensely competitive market, pharmaceutical supplier ACG Capsules prioritized manufacturing superior-quality products, improving responsiveness, increasing production yields and enhancing workforce productivity. To achieve this, ACG Capsules implemented 25+ Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases powered by the industrial internet of things (IIoT), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), digital twins, extended reality and generative AI. Effective adoption of these use cases has resulted in a reduction in critical defects of 98 percent, a shortening of production lead times of 39 percent, a drop in total losses of 51 percent and a 44 percent rise in workforce productivity.
ReNew (Ratlam, Madya Pradesh, India): To maximize productivity, streamline costs and redeploy the existing workforce to help in-source operations and maintenance (O&M) capabilities, renewable energy company ReNew built on and scaled the digital and analytics backbone from its first Lighthouse site, including new proprietary AI models and the rapid scaling of Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases across 70 wind farms, 10 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and 22 unique wind turbine models. Ratlam, the company’s benchmark site for this scale transformation, has sustained improvements of 1.7 percent higher energy yield, 17 percent reductions in operating expenses and 40 percent less waste. This led to a 20 percent increase in profitability.
End-to-End (E2E) Value Chain Lighthouse
Unilever (Sonepat, India): To improve agility and cater to diverse product segments, reduce costs in an inflationary environment and improve sustainability, Unilever Sonepat implemented 30+ Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases in its E2E supply chain. Top use cases included boiler and spray dryer process twins, as well as customer data-informed no-touch production planning and inventory optimization. This improved service by 18 percent, forecast accuracy by 53 percent, conversion cost by 40 percent and Scope 1 carbon footprint by 88 percent. The use of biofuels enabled by a boiler process twin also supports livelihoods for local farmers.
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