Low Code, Apps & A New Digital Era for Industry 4.0
Enabling Manufacturing in the Digital Age
We all know that manufacturing has seen dramatic change over the last 20 years, not only in terms of the global marketplace, but also in terms of the massive technological strides it has made in order to better deal with that marketplace. The modern factory floor is becoming a highly efficient, automated place, tied directly to the rest of an enterprise’s infrastructure and supply chain. The most exciting part is that these advancements don’t seem to be winding down at all. As the manufacturing industry continues to undergo its dramatic transformation into the digital age, manufacturers are beginning to more readily understand and utilize a plethora of new technologies and methodologies that we like to call “enablers” for Industry 4.0. These include:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Advanced Analytics
- Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)
- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Digital Twin
- Cloud Computing
- Industrial Cybersecurity
- Mobile Applications
- Low-Code Development Platforms (LCDP)
Enabling technologies such as those above add value to an organization’s existing digital backbone, meaning its foundational IT environment, by strengthening the connection between its core systems and harnessing the power of the data being collected by them to provide intelligent analytical information that can be used to improve operations and business results. While Engineering Industries eXcellence’s Industries eXcellence team leverages a number of these enabling technologies when it comes to delivering successful enterprise solutions for our customers, today let’s talk about Low-Code Development.
What are Low-Code Development Platforms?
A Low-Code Development Platform, or an LCDP for short, is a technology platform that provides a unique development environment designed to facilitate and speed up the creation of value-driving software applications. Low-Code Development Platforms enable rapid application building using highly visual graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop features and model-driven configuration logic. Anyone in an IT department or with some basic familiarity with the back end of software can learn to use them, as opposed to traditional hand-coded computer programming, which not only requires much more technical expertise and training, but makes it difficult for collaboration and input from other stakeholders who do not know the specific programming language or coding approach being used.
Low-Code Development Platforms are also designed to lower the initial cost of application setup, training, deployment and maintenance, making their use approachable and affordable to manufacturers and companies of all shapes and sizes, but particularly those who want results fast and don’t have the resources, budget or internal expertise to take on the requirements of a full-scale enterprise system implementation initiative. At the same time, the flexibility and openness of most low-code development environments is not only conducive to future scalability and enhancement, but supports integration with a plethora of external systems and devices, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and smart devices such as glasses, watches and tablets.
Key Principles of Low-Code Development Platforms
- Cloud Native Architecture: Empower your organization to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic digital environments.
- Open & Extensible: Platform Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), model APIs and Software Development Kits (SDKs) for rich extensibility options. Integration with anything.
- Scale Without Redesign: Designed for growth with microservice architecture. Operate efficiently, and prevent painful re-architecting.
- Collaborative Visual Development: Intuitive development features with built-in collaboration streams help your people create what the business needs quickly.
- Multi-Channel User Experience: Reach users where they are with effortless, stunning applications. Build Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), hybrid applications or native mobile applications.
- Deploy Anywhere: Run applications in any cloud or on-premises. Out-of-the-box containers mean no extra software development effort.
Key Benefits of Low-Code Development Platforms
- Low Skills Needed: Enable developers with different levels of software development experience, and especially those with very little experience, to create applications successfully.
- Time-to-Run: Enable accelerated delivery of value-driving business applications.
- Collaboration: Enable stakeholders from different departments and business units to contribute to the development of an application.
- Cost-Savings: Reduce the time, effort and costs needed to develop and deploy smart applications.
- User Experience: Improve and innovate the application development experience for your software development teams and stakeholders.
- Continuous Improvement: Give your people access to applications and intelligent data that will help them improve decision-making, optimize business processes and increase production results across your enterprise.
When Low Code Meets Smart Manufacturing
The strategy which an organization employs to manage the performance and maintenance of its critical infrastructure and assets plays a major role in the productivity and profitability of the business as a whole. In manufacturing, studies show that unplanned downtime can cost an enterprise 10 times more than planned maintenance due to the disruption to business and lost production. Our team leverages Low-Code Development Platforms, such as Siemens Mendix and Edge2Web, to deliver effective solutions and applications for Asset Performance Management, Asset Monitoring and Asset Maintenance to manufacturing customers across all industrial sectors.
We partner with a number of leading Low-Code Development Platform providers, so that we can offer the best low-code technology and its advantages to manufacturers looking for a faster track to Industry 4.0. With the support of such enabling technologies and our unique experience implementing and integrating the entire spectrum of digital tools for manufacturing, we are able to deliver integrated and intelligent software applications quickly and cost-effectively for our customers. More importantly, we empower our customers and their people with the tools and capabilities they need to solve the greatest challenges on their production floor and across their global enterprise.
