AU2019 General Keynote – Manufacturing of Buildings, Reinvent The Wheel And Intelligent Decisions

AU2019 is in a full swing. I attended the general keynote session yesterday. From my experience, Andrew Anagnost, CEO of Autodesk presented the vision and gave a few very interesting examples of how we can get better in building, manufacturing and generally working together.

My favorite theme in Andrew’s keynotes is that he always brings very personal examples.

Here are three topics I captured during the session and I wanted to share it with you.
 
Manufacturing of Building

Traditionally construction was a completely separate industry from manufacturing. You probably remember my old BIM vs PLM articles. But things are changing and now construction is very much reminding manufacturing (ETO – Engineering to Order) solutions. A building is a product that is built based on the order and it represents a unique piece of a product.

Andrew Anagnost brought a very interesting example during the keynote speaking about Skystone Group (https://www.skystone.com/) – a company creating modular houses. The building blocks are manufactured off-site using modern manufacturing technologies and then the final assembly is happening on construction site.

Think about these building blocks as modular manufacturing units Design, production planning and assembly of these units are not different from any manufacturing assembly line from the standpoint of tools (software) usage as well as collaboration and data management technologies.

Reinvent the wheel

The second example I want to share is about collaboration and intelligence in using tools such as Generative design. VW eclectic bus is using wheels “reinvented” using Autodesk technologies. The most interesting part of the example is how a group of engineers were able to work on the project together collaborating in real-time.

Data-Driven Decisions

Last, but not least – the example of Airbus facilities planning. What I especially like in this example is how multi-disciplinary decision-making tools used to bring an optimal design and manufacturing process planning.

What is my conclusion? The common theme in these examples is intelligence and the use of data. How to apply technologies to the data in order to find a better solution – this is a key theme I think will go with us for the next 10 years of manufacturing innovation. It will bring online systems combined with data and intelligent algorithms to help manufacturing and construction companies to design, manufacture and built in a better way. Just my thoughts…

PS. The Autodesk show is great! My favorite was a laser show.

Best, Oleg

Disclaimer: I’m co-founder and CEO of OpenBOM developing cloud-based bill of materials and inventory management tool for manufacturing companies, hardware startups, and supply chain. My opinion can be unintentionally biased.