INFORMATION SERVICES GROUP, INC. STAMFORD, Conn., Aug. 20, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Information Services Group (ISG) (Nasdaq: III), a leading global technology research and advisory firm, has launched a research study examining the manufacturing services market as the industry it serves goes through major digital transformation.
The study results will be published in a comprehensive ISG Provider Lens™ report, called Manufacturing Industry Services 2020, scheduled to be released in January. The report will evaluate service providers across several key areas of smart manufacturing, including automation tools.
The new report will “examine the role of service providers across the entire value chain of manufacturing engineering ― from virtual layout or simulation of the shop floor, ergonomics for machinery and IT/OT convergence to aftermarket services such as leveraging digital twins to check the condition of machinery along the wear curve,” said Christian Decker, ISG partner and EMEA lead, Smart Manufacturing.
The report also will examine how the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming an accelerator for digitization and local production. With the pandemic disrupting global production and supply chains, the need for smart factories to virtualize production and move it closer to customers is accelerating.
In addition, the report will look at how manufacturers are shifting from product sales to a product-as-a-service model and how product lifecycles are growing shorter and bringing about a decline in product loyalty among customers.
ISG has distributed surveys to more than 150 manufacturing services providers. Working in collaboration with ISG’s global advisors, the research team will produce five quadrants representing the services and products the typical enterprise client is buying in the manufacturing space, based on ISG’s experience working with its clients. The five quadrants that will be covered are:
- Smart Product Engineering – Automotive, assessing service providers and system integrators’ capabilities in systems engineering, including electrical and mechanical hardware, software and embedded systems along segments such as small series manufacturing, tests and simulations. The automotive smart product engineering process starts after prototype development that covers every aspect of industry-scale manufacturing engineering, including niche techniques such as additive manufacturing.
- Smart Product Engineering – High-Tech/Semiconductors, covering the engineering and R&D capabilities of service providers in the mainstream semiconductor manufacturing processes, and across front-end-of-the-line and backend-of-the-line subprocesses ― from creation of transistors to the formation of interconnects within a device. A provider’s expertise is measured based on its design engineering prowess as well as its quality assurance capabilities. Some of the major functions include ensuring compatibility in interconnects—the small wiring schemes in devices, which contribute to the resistance-capacitance delay—in semiconductor chips.
- Production Automation Solutions, including automation solutions that bring about automated responses in surveillance and predictive maintenance of the production environment to reduce outage time of all moving, robotic parts. These solutions detect patterns and trends by processing large volumes of structured and unstructured data from multiple sources, including IoT sensors. Production use cases for analytics include optimized use of plant machinery, continuous monitoring and digitally derived improvements in product quality and design, sales forecasts, improved knowledge about customer usage and supply chain optimization.
- Manufacturing Virtualization Solutions, covering all aspects of non-physical and digital modeling-based manufacturing, including augmented reality/virtual reality technologies, interactive computer aided design and digital twins, a digital representation of an object or a process from the real world. Digital modeling includes all component testing and pre-manufacturing calculations for additive manufacturing. Industrial augmented reality includes the integration of object recognition, computer graphics, artificial intelligence and human interaction with sensors and display devices through intuitive interfaces.
- Manufacturing Connectivity and OT Security Solutions, including the capability of service providers to deploy near-real-time networks to dynamize factory automation with a local radio network via a licensed spectrum. ISG assesses a provider’s proficiency with the new 5G standard that has the potential for real-time communication, driving scenarios such as robotic peer-to-peer communication without latency. The quadrant focuses on solutions for manufacturing connectivity that integrates with wired industrial local area network devices, a local management system to monitor and manage a local network infrastructure and connected devices, and a low-latency cloud infrastructure for 5G network functions and industrial applications. On the security side, ISG analyzes the security solutions offered by a service provider to monitor Modbus, Profibus, ethernet traffic and proprietary traffic, and protect OT components such as SCADA software, physical equipment and machine control systems and remote industrial software that are not connected to the external world.
The report will cover the global manufacturing services market and examine products and services available in the U.S., Germany and the U.K. ISG analysts Henning Dransfeld, Avimanyu Basu, Manali Bhaumik and Sri Harsha Edala will serve as authors of the report.
A list of identified providers and vendors and further details on the study are available in this digital brochure. Companies not listed as manufacturing service providers can contact ISG and ask to be included in the study.
About ISG Provider Lens™ Research
The ISG Provider Lens™ Quadrant research series is the only service provider evaluation of its kind to combine empirical, data-driven research and market analysis with the real-world experience and observations of ISG's global advisory team. Enterprises will find a wealth of detailed data and market analysis to help guide their selection of appropriate sourcing partners, while ISG advisors use the reports to validate their own market knowledge and make recommendations to ISG's enterprise clients. The research currently covers providers offering their services globally, across Europe and Latin America, as well as in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, the U.K., France, the Nordics, Brazil and Australia/New Zealand, with additional markets to be added in the future. For more information about ISG Provider Lens research, please visit this webpage.
The series is a complement to the ISG Provider Lens Archetype reports, which offer a first-of-its-kind evaluation of providers from the perspective of specific buyer types.
Starting this year, each ISG Provider Lens™ study will include a Global Summary to help enterprise subscribers better understand provider capabilities across all geographic markets covered by that study. All ISG Provider Lens™ reports also will now include an Enterprise Context feature to help executives quickly identify key insights related to their roles and responsibilities.
About ISG
ISG (Information Services Group) (Nasdaq: III) is a leading global technology research and advisory firm. A trusted business partner to more than 700 clients, including more than 75 of the world's top 100 enterprises, ISG is committed to helping corporations, public sector organizations, and service and technology providers achieve operational excellence and faster growth. The firm specializes in digital transformation services, including automation, cloud and data analytics; sourcing advisory; managed governance and risk services; network carrier services; strategy and operations design; change management; market intelligence and technology research and analysis. Founded in 2006, and based in Stamford, Conn., ISG employs more than 1,300 digital-ready professionals operating in more than 20 countries—a global team known for its innovative thinking, market influence, deep industry and technology expertise, and world-class research and analytical capabilities based on the industry’s most comprehensive marketplace data. For more information, visit www.isg-one.com.
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Will Thoretz Information Services Group, Inc. +1 203 517 3119 Will.Thoretz@isg-one.com Jim Baptiste Matter Communications for ISG +1 978 518 4527 jbaptiste@matternow.com
