Deloitte has opened its planned smart factory in Wichita. The new facility, which features a fully functioning manufacturing production line, is designed to help solve the toughest challenges in manufacturing.

The new facility brings together an ecosystem of collaborators, including founders: AWS, Dragos, Infor, SAP, Siemens, and Wichita State University, and builders: Check Point, HPE, Tenable, ServiceNow, UiPath, and Verizon.

Deloitte has created a technology platform, Smart Factory Accelerator, with a suite of managed services that support manufacturers navigating complex digital transformation.

The cloud-based turnkey set of solutions with analytics is designed to address operational challenges such as visibility into end-to-end operations at scale as well as provide predictive operational insights, and support performance objectives.

As part of the Smart Factory project, Deloitte has partnered with Elenco Electronics and AWS to produce and distribute a new STEM education product: the Smart Rover kit. Produced on the factory’s production line, the Smart Rover kit incorporates one of Elenco’s Snap Circuits kits, the Snap Rover, with a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and camera module to educate middle school students on product design, coding and engineering. With initial donations going to 1,000 middle school students in Metro Detroit, Philadelphia and Wichita in 2022, Deloitte aims to reach 800,000 students in the US over four years to foster long-term systemic impact in STEM education.

“Manufacturers must evolve in response to unprecedented levels of supply chain and workforce disruption by reassessing the capacity and agility of their manufacturing operations,” said Dan Helfrich, chair and CEO, Deloitte Consulting LLP. “The Smart Factory @ Wichita showcases how Deloitte and our strong ecosystem of collaborators is bringing this innovation to life and helping deliver a combination of strategy and end-to-end technology to help organisations better navigate the challenges of today and tomorrow with a tech-forward approach.”