How smart manufacturing will evolve in 2024 and beyond

There’s no doubt that in 2024, the manufacturing sector will remain under unusual scrutiny. China, Europe, India, the US and others are paying more attention to where and how things get made than they ever have. Indeed, subsidies and political clout are being lavishly spread in a race to attract and retain strategic manufacturing capacity. From AI and machine learning to physical robots and the industrial metaverse, smart manufacturing technologies play their part in helping the manufacturing sector adapt to this changing world.

As we look ahead, Forrester predicts that a healthy pragmatism will take hold in the manufacturing sector. The prior bold claims on everything from the industrial metaverse to generative AI (GenAI) will be toned down as the painful realities of grappling with issues such as technical debt, legislation, and global supply chains bite.

The metaverse winter

With regards to the metaverse, over the next year we expect more than 75 per cent of industrial metaverse projects to rebrand in a bid to survive the “metaverse winter”. The metaverse – the 3D experience layer of the internet – was the ChatGPT of late 2021 and most of 2022. It dominated newspaper headlines, and startups with even the most tenuous of connections to it attracted unsustainable valuations. A year ago, Forrester predicted the “metaverse winter”, and now we will see that same chill spreading to the industrial sector throughout 2024.

The industrial metaverse builds on a number of existing – and proven – technologies and is quite different from the consumer or enterprise metaverse, but the name is becoming a liability. In fact, close association with the “other” metaverse risks becoming the kiss of death to otherwise exemplary industrial projects. To keep existing budgets or attract new investment in 2024 and beyond, technology leaders in manufacturing will stop talking about the industrial metaverse and return to emphasising its building blocks.

GenAI will fail to transform manufacturing

GenAI will also fail to transform the business of manufacturing in 2024. There’s no question that manufacturing leaders are intrigued by it, but they’re moving more cautiously than their peers in other industries. According to Forrester, 29 per cent of AI decision-makers characterise their organisation’s use of GenAI as “experimentation.”

Two factors explain this caution. Firstly, workflows require complex interactions between a set of ecosystem partners and a range of expensive machines. Introducing new and largely untested technologies is simply too risky. Secondly, the impact of mistakes, or GenAI’s so-called “hallucinations”, on physical work is prohibitively high, with lost productivity, damaged machines, or even injury.

GenAI has a place, and companies already doing the hard work to structure, clean and understand their IT and operational technology (OT) data are well placed to take advantage, but even they should proceed with caution.

Autonomous vehicles will turn to the industrial world

One advancement we will see in the industrial world in 2024 is the use of autonomous vehicles. Indeed, autonomous vehicle investors are increasingly seeking quicker returns in controlled environments. Technical challenges, regulatory caution, legislative territoriality and consumer diffidence has meant that self-driving vehicles on every public road are still some way off. However, automated vehicles have been transforming more controlled environments in warehouses, factories and ports for years.

We expect to see firms building the enabling technologies for self-driving cars – and their investors – shift focus from passenger vehicles to the industrial world in 2024. The risks are lower, there’s good money to be made and lessons learned there will be applicable in the outside world once lawmakers, buyers, drivers and passers-by are ready.

Ultimately, digital innovation is alive and well in the manufacturing sector, but it has to be measured and thoughtful. In 2024, innovations will need to deliver value in the harshest conditions, and they must work for an ageing and overstretched workforce. They will require steady, valuable development with a recalibration of over-excited promises from previous years.

You can also read about Forrester’s technology predictions here.