Impact of Industry 4.0 on Your Business
Data analysis, intelligent and autonomous machines, web connectivity and 3D printing. What to they all have in commom?
Answer: they're giving life to a whole new industrial revolution, Industry 4.0. This will change the core business model for traditional manufacturing and bring about new resources and way of thinking.
Integration and robotization, two key concepts. Integration of all processes used in any company, starting with vertical integration between departments and an horizontal between clients, factories and suppliers. Robotization on the other hand will trade many of the human interactions in the industrial process towards being machine-led.
Industry 4.0 can bring a lot of needed change to factories but outputs and value propositions can vary between companies.
Vertical integration can give accelerate input response times due to a faster communication between all process stages and efficient data analysis. Horizontal integration can provide a high flexibility to manufacturing, while keeping the process completely transparent to stakeholders.
Value proposition from these two types of integrations can be very different and must be carefully analyzed within markets. For example, in a high output standardized manufacture, the process flexibility can be a non-relevant point in the short-term of the factory. Other Industry 4.0 outputs are risk reduction and higher competitiveness, relevant to all.
For smaller companies, a complete business model can be made to adapt all its processes to the opportunities at hand. For bigger companies, extracting data from all the parts of the process is essential to the business monitoring, continuous improvement and integration between different market segments.
Nanotech, mobile technology, drones and robots, AI, sensoring, clean energy and 3D printing are all part of the integrations that lead to the new era of manufacturing. These technologies are not new but their easier use and continuous price reductions start to give the opportunity to implement them on manufacturing.
To use and apply them, the companies need an IT infrastructure, an IT support and an Engineering support. Are you up for it?