Future-Proofing Global Value Chains: Country Preparedness and Beyond

Case studies

Total number of case studies

299

Sectors

21

Locations

59

Topics

9

Facing fierce competition, significant demand fluctuation and growing product customization, Lenovo Hefei, the world’s largest single PC factory, deployed over 30 Fourth Industrial Revolution flexible automation and advanced analytics use cases, improving labour productivity by 45%, reducing supplier quality issue by 55%, while managing small-size yet numerous customer orders (80% of them being less than five units).
People's Republic of China
Lenovo - Hefei
To quadruple retail channels in China and double store coverage to 4 million retail outlets, and address the impact of double-digit inflation related to labour and logistics costs, the company invested in multiple Fourth Industrial Revolution solutions. This allowed it to transform a linear supply chain into an integrated supply ecosystem, with improved OTIF by 18%, reduced lead times of 32% and securing growth in market share from 23.4% to 28.3%.
People's Republic of China | Food & Retail
Mondelez - Suzhou
Having navigated the COVID-19 uncertainties in the catering industry in the past three years, Unilever accelerated market penetration in low tier cities by deploying over 30 Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases, such as tailor-made 24/7 digital selling, optimal end-to-end advanced planning and AI-enabled quality control. As a result, the number of served customers doubled, order-to-delivery lead time shrank by 40% and customer complaints fell by 62%.
People's Republic of China | Chemicals
Unilever - Tianjin
Facing a shrinking market, the Unilever site in Indaiatuba, the largest powder detergent factory in the world, top in productivity and second in cost globally but Unilever’s biggest contributor to GHG emissions, implemented use cases such as digital twin and AI to improve cost leadership and agility to the market while minimizing environmental footprint. As a result, Indaiatuba reduced innovation lead time by 33%, production costs per tonne by 23% and nearly eliminated GHG emissions.
Brazil | Chemicals
Unilever - Indaiatuba
Bang Pa-in is producing cost sensitive consumer hard disk drives (HDDs). Facing material cost increase caused by supply chain uncertainty and with the goal to limit capital deployment due to market shifting to solid-state drives (SSD), Bang Pa-in implemented diverse Fourth Industrial Revolution use cases to reduce factory cost by 33% while reducing energy consumption/peta byte (PB) by 40%.
Thailand | Technology
Western Digital - Bang Pa-In
To build resilience in the face of volcanic eruptions, typhoons, long lead time for materials, volatile demand and tightened product specifications, the Laguna site deployed over 25 use cases at scale, such as event anomaly detection by advanced analytics and end-to-end production variation compensation by machine learning. As a result, the site was able to reduce unplanned shutdowns by 82% and production cost/unit by 54%.
Philippines | Technology
Western Digital - Laguna
The company is under pressure to deliver 60% of orders in less than 72 hours and needed to accelerate end to end processes without compromising quality excellence. Wistron transformed its entire value chain via 33 in-house-built use cases. Despite supply shortages, UPPH was enhanced by 32%, defect rates were reduced by 55% and delivery times shortened to 48 hours, ultimately reducing manufacturing unit costs by 22%.
People's Republic of China | Technology
WIstron - Zhongshan
With the ambition to simplify high-tech manufacturing in low-volume, high-complexity instruments to meet rising customer demand, Agilent Singapore deployed IIoT-powered digital twin, AI & Robotic Automation solutions to achieve sustainable growth, overcoming bottlenecks from specialized manpower and transforming the workforce into scalable 4IR-ready generalists. This resulted in improved productivity by 60%, improved cycle time by 30% and quality cost by 20%.
Singapore | Technology
Agilent - Singapore
Facing rising challenges of steep price-cuts & growing input costs to its endeavor of pioneering access to high-quality affordable drugs globally, Cipla deployed “Digital-Automation-Analytics (DAA)” to unlock E2E cost, productivity & quality leadership – across a network of 22 India sites in parallel, over just 2 years.Indore-OSD led this “DAA” journey with 30+ use-cases, spanning IIoT, Digital, Advanced Analytics, NLP, RPA, Robotics, etc. – to improve Total Cost (26%↓), Productivity (23%↑), Quality (300%↑) & GHG emission (28%↓).
India | Health
Cipla Indore
To catch up significant business growth, and higher quality and sustainability expectation, CATL builds up a large greenfield in Yibin city since 2021. The plant further deployed in depth AI, IoT and flexible automation on top of CATL Ningde headquarters lighthouse digital initiatives, have achieved 17% increased line speed, 14% reduced yield loss, and zero carbon emission
People's Republic of China | Automotive
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL) - YiBin
Being one of the best performing plants, facing a dynamic labor market and a growth of its production complexity by 35%, Danone Opole engaged its whole workforce across functions and levels into a digital transformation journey to deploy connected shopfloor, artificial intelligence and automation at scale. As a result, it improved costs by 19%, efficiency by 12% while improving quality and reducing GHG emissions by close to 50%. It became a transformation leader for the other 39 Danone plants in Europe & top employer in the local market
Poland | Food & Retail
Danone - Opole
Facing business challenges from severe price erosion and rapidly evolving quality expectations, the 25-year-old site embarked on large scale digitalization to sustain and grow in the generic pharma market. The site deployed 40+ 4IR use cases by operating in garage mode and leveraging IIoT & democratized platform for advanced analytics. As a result, it improved manufacturing cost by 43% while proactively enhancing quality and reducing energy by 41%
India | Health
Dr Reddy's - Hyderabad
Faced with the challenge of competitiveness while not losing sight of sustainability, employees health & safety commitments, Flex implemented 4IR initiatives along the end-to-end value chain, from circular economy to digital performance management and EHS to supply chain control tower, resulting into a 50% labor cost improvement, a 81% material loss reduction, increased plant agility while improving sustainability and increasing customer satisfaction (+18%) as well employee engagement & well-being.
Brazil | Technology
Flex - Sorocaba
In order to meet the demands of consumers for high quality and short lead-times of products, Midea Shunde factory has actively deployed AI, digital twin and other Industry 4.0 technologies in the end-to-end value chain, realizing 24% lower unit production cost, 41% shorter lead-times,30% shorter R&D lead time and 51% less defect rate.
People's Republic of China | Other
Midea - Shunde
Driven by the aspiration to 1) outgrow the market through superior volume delivery, 2) strengthen cost leadership, 3) build further resilience and diversity in a volatile environment, Mondelez Sricity deployed end-to-end digitalization, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence and advanced automation to increase labour productivity by 150%, reduce manufacturing costs by 38% and sustain 50% female workforce making it a benchmark manufacturing site for Mondelez globally.
India | Food & Retail
Mondelez - Sri City
With an aim of reducing energy use, water consumption, and GHG emissions, Flex’s facility in Sorocaba implemented smart factory utilities management and optimized electronic waste in its supply chain and manufacturing operations using IoT sensors to enable circular economy solutions. Flex Sorocaba reduced scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions by 41%, for scope 3 managed to avoid 44 kilotonnes of CO2 eq (carbon dioxide equivalent), and reduced water consumption by more than 30%.
Brazil | Technology
Flex - Sorocaba - Sustainability
To build resilience in the face of rising energy costs and also reduce carbon emissions, Haier applied big data and AI to establish a power load model of equipment, as well as a production scheduler optimizing for energy consumption, reducing energy consumption by 35% and GHG emissions by 36%.
People's Republic of China | Technology
Haier - Tianjin - Sustainability
To reach its net zero target already by 2026, four years ahead of the corporate pledge, Siemens adopted digital process analysis and measurements, reducing its scope 1 & 2 GHG emissions by 69% normalized to volumes. In addition, to decarbonize its entire supply chain (scope 3), the plant acts as an incubator to develop Fourth Industrial Revolution products such as a digital product pass and a blockchain-based software to exchange CO2 data with suppliers.
Germany | Technology
Siemens - Amberg - Sustainability
Arçelik Ulmi greenfield factory, powered by 100% green electricity, deployed sustainability use cases such as digital-twin for energy management and closed loop water management system integrated to advanced water treatment plant. In an environment suffering from water stress, it resulted in a reduction of water consumption by 25% as well as a reduction of energy consumption by 17% and GHG emission by 22%, per unit manufactured.
Romania | Technology
Arçelik - Ulmi - Sustainability
With the growing demand for memory and storage solutions, there is a need for Micron Singapore to expand and increase Gigabyte production while reducing environmental footprint. From 2018 to 2021, Micron Singapore increased output by ~270% and simultaneously reduced resources used per Gigabyte produced by ~45%. This is enabled by sustainable technology development with optimization of materials consumption through environmental footprint tracking.
Singapore
Micron - Singapore - Sustainability

Future-Proofing Global Value Chains: Country Preparedness and Beyond

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