The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the medical and Healthcare industries. Manufacturers are fighting to meet demand driven by the pandemic situation at a time when supply and workforce availability are reduced as never before. 

For those healthcare industries, the current crisis will accelerate the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies and create capabilities across the whole operation to take on board data integration that will optimize its performance.

Medical and Healthcare Industries problems driven by COVID-19

  • Meet high demand driven by the pandemic situation.
  • Disruptions across supply chains of parts and raw materials.
  • Reduced workforce availability 
  • Drops on sales for some specific products and extreme pressure to cut operational costs.

The reduced workforce, social distancing and employee safety measures challenger

To operate factories with limited workforce and reduced number of hours  as an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus, under the sense of short-term situation, or possibly long-term, is definitely a complication that intensifies the situation. 

For the Healthcare industries, which has seen an increase in orders of medical products, trying to meet orders with fewer people on the floor is a struggle. The implementation of digital factory technologies that can remotely increase efficiency and capacity is a must at this moment. 

Remote monitoring technology can provide the operational visibility to managers and engineering teams, who are able to remotely diagnose problems and solve issues, reacting to problems on the floor that impact production lines. 

Real-time data collection to improve efficiency

For medical and Healthcare industries,  real-time data can be a strategic resource across multiple steps of production of existing products and to new product introduction processes (NPI). A full end-to-end transparency over the whole manufacturing cycle can increase the production capacity with a shorten production time and improvement of product quality, as we need to meet the demand.

Industrial IoT, data capture tools and AI-based insights across operations creates the automatic data mapping of all the production lines , identifying  and analysing the relevant data by algorithms.

The relevant information is then provided in an interactive dashboard. The manufacturing analytics enables efficiencies in predictability, optimizes manufacturing performance and cuts production costs. 

How real time data collection and analysis will help Healthcare industries to supply the demand and respond to COVID19:

  • Smart collections between stages of production generate a quick and accurate root cause analysis can detect any anomaly of quality and yield, reducing faulty products.
  • The automatic alerts to prevent degradation in the manufacturing process reduces downtime incidents and waste.
  • The data cross influencers between tests can quickly and efficiently introduce a new product process (NPI), improving product testability by improving test limits.

How AI increases production capacity to Healthcare industries 

Regulations and standards for medical products include extensive testing procedures that delays deliveries occasionally. Efforts need to be made to ensure the manufacturing quality control, while increasing the production capacity due to the pandemic crises.

Artificial Intelligence empowers effective analytics solutions with a correlation analysis from all the manufacturing processes. This integration detects useless tests and faulty products through a quick and accurate root cause analysis. 

Benefits from analytics solution to increase production capacity to Healthcare industries 

  • Ensure product design for manufacturability – Improve a quick and efficient new product introduction (NPI)
  • Follow manufacturing regulations quality control – Guarantee device’s development quality directives for manufacturing.

The generated automatic alerts at the analytics dashboards prevent degradation of the process and reduces downtime incidents. The adoption of the software management quickly optimizes quality and efficiency, increasing production capacity.