Global marketing intelligence firm IDC has revealed its manufacturing insights for 2020. Manufacturing Insights' 2020 Worldwide Manufacturing Predictions shows what it expects to impact manufacturers' IT investments in 2020 and beyond.

"Manufacturing companies are transforming from efficiency-oriented operations to resilient organizations driven by a tighter connection to their markets and customers," said Kevin Prouty, vice president of manufacturing insights at IDC. "Their decision making must be near real time and based on mass customization and customer experience (CX), whether a physical product, a performed service, or a sales engagement."

The ten 2020 WW Manufacturing Predictions are:

1. By 2023, 65% of the global manufacturers will realize a savings of 10% in operational expenses through process digital twins driven by IoT and ML routines that factor in unstructured data sets.
2. By the end of 2021, half of all manufacturing supply chains will have invested in supply chain resiliency and artificial intelligence, resulting in productivity improvements of 15%.
3. By 2021, 30% of manufacturers will have a digital application unit that will use low-code technologies to create business-relevant applications without needing the coding skills required.
4. By 2023, 60% of G2000 manufacturers will address growing industry talent shortages by making significant investments in intelligent robotic process automation.
5. The need for operational resiliency with data-driven processes will lead 60% of manufacturers to shift their smart factory strategy focus from technology implementation to process change management by 2022.
6. Driven by increased requirements for sustainability, by 2025, 30% of manufacturers will be utilizing blockchain and IoT to provide reliable provenance, leading to a 90% increase in audit efficiency.
7. By 2021, 20% of manufacturing companies will have started to treat their assets as internal customers, leading to a 40% reduction in asset downtime.
8. To lessen critical equipment failures, by 2024, 40% of OEMs will leverage field asset IoT data to intelligently diagnose pending issues and resolve autonomously reducing unplanned downtime by 25%.
9. By 2024, 75% of all consumer-facing manufacturing companies will have materially transformed their supply chains to manage customization at scale, resulting in share gains of 2-3%.
10. By 2022, 70% of manufacturers will use cloud-based innovation platforms and marketplaces for cross-industry and customer codevelopment that creates 50% of new products and service ideas.