Within the manufacturing realm, when quantum
computing’s predicted capabilities come to fruition,
automotive, aerospace, and electronics industries
could benefit from:
– Materials with more advantageous strength-toweight ratios
– Batteries that offer significantly higher energy densities
– More efficient synthetic and catalytic processes that
could help with energy generation and carbon capture.
Design
Today, many products are designed and pre-tested
using computer simulation. Automotive and aerospace
hardware components and subcomponents are
3D-modeled with individual engineering safety margins.
These margins can accumulate, culminating in products
that are over-engineered, overweight, or higher cost than
necessary, which can stifle their commercial viability.
But, future quantum computers are expected to be able
to simulate component interactions within complex
hardware systems, more precisely and comprehensively
calculating system loads, load paths, noise, and vibration.
This integrated analysis can optimize the manufacturing
of individual components in the context of the overall
system, reducing the cumulative impact of numerous
individual safety margins and improving cost without
sacrificing overall system performance.
The combination of quantum computing
and machine learning, as well as its application to
optimization, is expected to have significant impact in
manufacturing in several areas:
– Semiconductor chip fabrication already uses machine
learning and simple multi-variable analysis. But,
classical computing has hit a computational wall and
can’t increase the number of factors for more complex
analysis. It’s expected that quantum computing might
analyze additional interactive factors and processes
to increase production yield.
– Production flows and robotics scheduling for complex
products, such as automobiles, are highly complex,
and their simulation and optimization is very compute
intensive. Quantum computing m
optimization runs and allow prod
ight enable faster
uction to perform
optimizations more dynamically.
– As product functionality becomes increasingly
software-defined, quality control for software
development relies on progressively sophisticated
software validation, verification, and fault analysis.
A modern high-end car might have 100 million lines
of code, even more than a new commercial airliner.7
Future quantum computers should have the capability
to analyze software systems substantially more
complex than classical computers could possibly
evaluate today.
Supply
Supply chains are shifting from a linear model with
discrete, sequential, event-driven processes to a more
responsive organic model based on evolving real-time
market demands and up-to-the-minute availability of
key components. Adding to the digital supply chain
toolbox of Industry 4.0, quantum computing potentially
could accelerate decision-making and enhance risk
management to lower operational costs,as well as reduce
lost sales because of out-of-stock or discontinued
products. Enhancing competitive agility, quantum
computing might completely transform the supply chain
over time, adaptively redesigning it to optimize vendor
orders and accompanying logistics using dynamic
near-real-time decision-making based on changing
market demands.