Published on 08/03/2016 | Strategy
Co-Lead Roundtable at EuroCIO Summer Summit 2015:
Impact of Industry 4.0 (Smart Manufacturing) on e-Leadership
Digital has given end-users and consumers tremendous power and made sure that enterprises need to think and act more customer centric for remaining competitive. The impact on e-leadership is dramatic. Also more than ever, business agility and innovation are a must.
This sets the pace towards the 4th Industrial Revolution: Industry 4.0
But what is the value of your IT strategy towards your customer experience, if you cannot deliver?
Traditionally there has been a large focus on the front-end, especially on interaction with the customer and user experience. Improvements have been addressed by business process re-engineering and subsequently the “business administrative” application landscape.
Most companies however, especially manufacturers, have 2 additional application landscapes:
- IT for Product/Process Engineering, supporting Innovation and the Product Creation Processes
- IT for Production, supporting Manufacturing and the Product Realization Processes
Creating an Industry 4.0 (Smart Manufacturing) vision, strategy and roadmap which enables these processes and application landscapes, and at the same time new adapted technology to converge is essential and brings new opportunities for business growth.
The power of the digital consumer, ‘everywhere’, ‘anytime’, with the right ‘user experience’ demands quick innovative responses, whilst idea2market, first time right/zero defects, traceability and agility are crucial to remain competitive.
4 main streams could be defined, that would make the digital enterprise:
1. Human Interface: Which gives the Outside-In approach for the enterprise e-Leadership towards customer intimacy and experience;
2. IT-OT Organization: The organization should be shape in such away that it adapt to the enterprise digital strategy and incorporate the Operational Technology competences needed for seemless agility in innovation and production;
3. Digital Foundation: Which will provide the fundament for an integrated Business IT, Engineering IT and manufacturing IT environment. This enables the enterprise to meet the dynamics of their Outside-In strategy and by this can fullfill demands and agility created by human interaction;
4. Plant IQ: Brings in the ability to collect, process and store multiple data sources, in a modular, scalable and hybrid approach. This allows to deliver services for real-time predictability and advanced analytics to be used by human and machines, as well as using models and simulation for ‘what-if’ scenario’s.
There are multiple entries to get on the digital journey within the 4 main streams. An enterprise should assess and define their strategy, and then distillate the roadmap and decide on the entry to follow for their digital journey.
