Discover potentials and properly use industry 4.0
The vision of the Smart Factory
The vision of Industry 4.0 describes intelligent factories ("Smart Factory"), which exchange data internally and across companies with strongly networked production systems and collaborate flexibly in value-added networks. Essential elements of the Smart Factory are embedded systems with local information processing and their extensive networking with each other and with the Internet. But especially for many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) it is a great challenge to digitalise their production and business processes and to develop business models accordingly. There is always one question: What are the competitive advantages and benefits for the own company?
We discover potentials and support companies in the implementation - Steps to Industry 4.0
The introduction of Industry 4.0 deals with both concrete technological issues and the organisational consequences of using the new technologies. Special attention is paid here to the employees, but also to the value retention of already installed production systems, which is so crucial for companies. When implementing Industry 4.0 modules, the specifics of the respective situation must be taken into account. For each company, the appropriate instruments must be selected, suitably configured and combined. The challenge lies in the existing heterogeneous IT and automation landscape with proprietary isolated solutions, i.e. the lack of an IT infrastructure and uniform interfaces.
The necessity of migration strategies
The accelerated technological change due to digitalisation and the associated structural changes in the role of the employee in the value-added process illustrate the need for continuous and comprehensive change management. The tasks of change management do not only relate to the communication of change and the creation of opportunities for participation, but rather begin with the design of processes and systems. Only in this way can the attitude of the employees be positively influenced and a concrete benefit of the transformation be presented. More concretely, migration strategies are needed which ensure a systematic and targeted further development of the company. In addition, there are often fears of know-how outflow with regard to the control of the accruing data, which must be adequately countered with regard to the acceptance of the innovation.