Enhancing business value through cloud-based engineering services

Engineering and manufacturing industries have been slow to get onto the cloud infrastructure bandwagon. Operational complexity and time criticality, reliability of human-machine interface, and security have been the primary reasons why engineering enterprises have stayed away from the cloud. But that is slowly changing. A NASSCOM report states the global cloud market for engineering and manufacturing operations is expected to reach over US $50 billion by 2027 and US $105 billion by 2030.

Challenges faced by engineering services
Let’s look at how an engineering value chain works to get an understanding of the challenges. There are four overarching functions in an engineering enterprise: product design and development; manufacturing operations; fulfillment and after-market services.Fulfillment and after-market services are easy to migrate to the cloud, as they deal with business applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).

It’s the design and operational aspects that are more challenging because these require dealing with engineering and manufacturing operations software, such as computer-aided design (CAD) or computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). Many of these are complex legacy software and from diverse stacks. Operations also require top-notch security before migrating to the cloud. Lack of talent that has both engineering domain and cloud knowledge is another hurdle. High fidelity images, designs, and 3D models require high bandwidth network connections for rendering better display, but engineers using cloud-hosted engineering workstations sometimes face latency and delay due to slow internet connections.

Cloud engineering services adoption depends on the industry
Engineering and manufacturing are part of many industry verticals but not all of them have a compelling need to migrate to the cloud. Aerospace, defense, agriculture, and construction have fewer incentives to move to the cloud while automotive, healthcare and life sciences, and manufacturing are moving many of their engineering services to the cloud. The larger takeaway is being mindful of the core reasons to move engineering services to the cloud.

Five trends that will accelerate the shift to cloud-based engineering services are:

Increase in 5G and Industry 4.0
According to GSMA, 5G networks are expected to cover one-third of the world’s population by 2025, making reduced latency and high bandwidth on the cloud a given. This is critical for product design where CAD, computer-aided Engineering (CAE), and CAM applications can be used seamlessly across teams with the lowest latencies for real-time data exchange. 

Rising 5G adoption, paired with Industry 4.0, could speed up the automation of engineering processes. Worldwide, manufacturing operations data on the cloud has provided visibility and control of production operations. This has helped enterprises to route production dynamically and brought agility to operations. Cloud has also improved the adoption of digital twins, VR/AR/XR, and digital thread (collaboration across product lifecycle management (PLM), manufacturing execution system (MES), IIoT, and ERP) with cloud being the underlying enabler.

Improved security
One of the major roadblocks for engineering services moving to the cloud is the security status for critical operational technology (OT) and engineering systems. But, this is changing with improvements in cloud security becoming a strategic priority for cloud service providers.

Collaborative design and quantum computing
Collaborative design and quantum computing will significantly benefit from moving workloads to the cloud. The accuracy and rapidity of product design and simulation will be significantly higher when stakeholders work off a single source of truth data on the cloud along with quantum computing abilities. This will have an outsized impact on manufacturing high-tech and construction industries. Engineering change management also involves managing multiple versions of artifacts and handling the approval workflow process where data is shared with multiple personas before freezing the design and the cloud enhances transparency and information access.

Sustainable engineering
Sustainable operations, as part of ESG is becoming an important agenda for every global enterprise. By having engineering applications on the cloud, enterprises can easily track resource, energy, and material consumption in real time. This also helps with predictive analysis with the use of AI/ML models, to proactively reduce downtime or predict which components within the engineering operations value chain need repair/replacement.

Helping hand from service providers
Engineering and manufacturing enterprises don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Moving engineering workloads to the cloud can be accelerated by partnerships with the right service providers. Cloud-based engineering services execution is a matter of having the right partnerships between IT vendors, pure-play engineering services providers, hyperscalers, and independent software vendors. The lack of talent is easily solved by service providers that have tie-ups with universities, upskilling employees with boot camps, and specialized training.

Cloud-based engineering services bring the best of two worlds to ensure complex engineering tasks are tackled in an agile and scalable manner. The use of cloud technologies also adds layers of advanced technologies such as AI/ML models or IoT connectivity to leverage new growth opportunities, improve product quality, and ensure customer satisfaction. Emerging technologies such as 5G, industry 4.0, and improved cloud security will accelerate this journey further.

-- Vikas Gupta, Associate VP and Global Head, Internet of Things, Infosys.