Confidential mandate
Smart Factory Architecture Director — Consulting
Planned Hiring / New
A process manufacturer needs a six-month vendor-neutral smart-factory architecture, priority use-case portfolio and investment sequence spanning plant data, controls, analytics and workforce adoption across three plants.
The mandate
The defined problem is a collection of plant pilots that cannot scale because data meanings, control boundaries and value tests differ by site. The manufacturer needs one architecture and investment logic, not another demonstration.
The deliverable is a plant baseline, canonical data and integration architecture, cybersecurity boundaries, scored use-case portfolio, two design-tested use cases, workforce plan and three-year investment roadmap.
Milestone one arrives 31 October 2026 with three-plant baseline; milestone two on 15 January 2027 with target architecture and use-case designs; milestone three on 31 March with validated economics, adoption plan and board investment sequence.
The Smart Manufacturing Council accepts when architecture covers ninety-five percent of priority data flows, two use cases pass shop-floor walkthroughs, finance validates benefits, cyber approves boundaries and each roadmap release has a measurable operational outcome.
The client provides automation inventories, network and historian access, process data, pilot artefacts, maintenance and quality records, plant experts and finance baselines. Each plant protects weekly operator-design time.
Why this is external work
Local pilots reflect vendor and site preferences, making enterprise decisions difficult. A vendor-neutral team can reconcile control, IT and operational perspectives into reusable patterns. The specialist architecture effort ends once designs and investment gates are accepted.
What you will own
- Baseline automation, data, connectivity and pilot value across three plants.
- Define canonical asset, event and production semantics for milestone one.
- Design edge, integration, platform and cybersecurity patterns.
- Score use cases by operational value, evidence, scalability and adoption burden.
- Walk through two use cases from signal to frontline decision.
- Quantify technology, change and operating costs with finance.
- Deliver the milestone-three three-year sequence and reusable standards.
Candidate qualifications
- 18–22 years in manufacturing technology, automation, operations or industrial architecture.
- Direct smart-factory architecture responsibility across multiple plants.
- Knowledge of industrial controls, historians, edge, data models and cybersecurity zones.
- Evidence of terminating pilots that lacked scalable operational value.
- Experience validating benefits with finance and frontline operators.
- Independence from automation and platform vendors.
Non-negotiables
- No technology resale or implementation commission.
- Director onsite at all three plants during baseline and walkthroughs.
- Operational benefits require finance and plant-owner validation.
- Architecture artefacts transfer fully to the client.
- 49 words maximum. Which multi-plant smart-factory architecture did you deliver, and what pilot did you stop or reshape?
- 49 words maximum. How would you define reusable plant data semantics across different automation estates?
- 49 words maximum. Which automation, process and finance inputs must each plant provide by week three?
This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.