Since the first Industrial Revolution, manufacturing sector has been at the forefront of change and progression, adopting emerging technologies to make quality and affordable products for consumers. Most manufacturers have a rich legacy that has helped them succeed, but in the era of Industry 4.0, many operations must transform and modernize to tackle the challenges of modern-day manufacturing. With digital transformation and the emergence of the smart factory, data has replaced physicality as the core element of the manufacturing process. This is evident from the fact that Industry 4.0 related technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), Digital Twin, and cloud computing both require and generate a lot of data. ServiceNow can be the perfect tool to help manufacturers manage the latest technologies in one place.
ServiceNow allows manufacturers to manage enterprise services from a single platform. The Now Platform is equipped with advanced automation and process workflow capabilities. The manufacturing solutions by ServiceNow use the Now Platform to streamline operations, increase efficiency and enhance employee experience by connecting processes, knowledge, technologies, and people on a single platform. This helps provide a frictionless environment increasing productivity and delivering improved service experience to users.
Traditionally, manufacturers managed their Operational Technology environment on legacy knowledge and manual processes which did not provide complete visibility into the environment required to efficiently monitor, manage and secure it. This challenge is addressed by ServiceNow’s Operation Technology Management product which provides a unified and contextual view of the organization’s Operational Technology environment and helps keep the system connected to production processes and digital workflows while ensuring security and continuity. With Operational Technology, assessing, prioritizing, and responding to threats and events is easier as there is complete visibility into the system. Here are the key tools available to manufacturers in the Operation Technology Management product.
To use the ServiceNow Manufacturing solution, the enterprise needs to have foundational data and relationships defined. The Operational Technology Manager application fulfills the task while also supporting the use of Now Platform’s Configuration Management Database (CMDB), Discovery Applications, and Service Graph Connectors.
The ServiceNow Manufacturing solution also requires a ISA-95 Equipment Model data foundation. The Manufacturing Process Manager application helps create this data as well as helps organizations create custom equipment models for different manufacturing sites.
For swift and effective prioritization and remediation of site-level Operational Technology assets, Operational Technology Vulnerability Response can be used. The tool prioritizes vulnerable assets depending on the criticality of the production process they automate and uses the relationship of the Operational Technology assets in the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
The Operational Technology Incident Management application is a part of the Operational Technology Service Management that helps teams swiftly resolve production process and Operational Technology assets issues.
Manufacturing solutions support domain separation or separation of processes, data and administrative tasks into logical groups. This separation, including access of data to users can be controlled by the enterprise when using this application.