A Strategist’s Guide to Industry
4.0
Global
businesses are about to integrate their operations into a seamless digital
whole, and thereby change the world.
Industrial revolutions are
momentous events. By most reckonings, there have been only three. The first
was triggered in the 1700s by the commercial steam engine and the
mechanical loom. The harnessing of electricity and mass production sparked the
second, around the start of the 20th century. The computer set the third in motion
after World War II.
It might seem too soon to
proclaim that the fourth industrial revolution, spurred by interconnected
digital technology, has begun. But Henning Kagermann, the head of the German
National Academy of Science and Engineering (Acatech), did exactly that in
2011, when he used the term Industrie 4.0 to describe a proposed
government-sponsored industrial initiative.
When you look closely at the rapid pace of digitization in
industry today, the name doesn’t seem hyperbolic at all. It is a signal of
sweeping change that is rapidly transforming many companies and may catch
others by surprise.
The term Industry
4.0 refers to the combination of several major innovations in digital
technology, all coming to maturity right now, all poised to transform the
energy and manufacturing sectors. These technologies include advanced robotics
and artificial intelligence; sophisticated sensors; cloud computing; the
Internet of Things; data capture and analytics; digital fabrication (including
3D printing); software-as-a-service and other new marketing models; smartphones
and other mobile devices; platforms that use algorithms to direct motor
vehicles (including navigation tools, ride-sharing apps, delivery and ride
services, and autonomous vehicles); and the embedding of all these elements in
an interoperable global value chain, shared by many companies from many
countries.
These technologies are often thought of separately. But when they
are joined together, they integrate the physical and virtual worlds. This
change enables a powerful new way of organizing global operations: bringing the
fungibility and speed of software to large-scale machine production. Under the
Industry 4.0 model, product design and development take place in simulated
laboratories and utilize digital fabrication models. The products themselves
take tangible form only after most of the design and engineering problems have
been worked out. The networks of machinery that have engendered industrial
society become hyper-aware systems of highly flexible technology, responding
rapidly not just to human commands but to their own perceptions and
self-direction.
This technological infrastructure is still in its early stages of
development. But it is already transforming manufacturing. Companies that
embrace Industry 4.0 are beginning to track everything they produce from cradle
to grave, sending out upgrades for complex products after they are sold (in the
same way that software has come to be updated). These companies are learning
mass customization: the ability to make products in batches of one
as inexpensively as they could make a mass-produced product in the 20th
century, while fully tailoring the product to the specifications of the
purchaser. As the movement develops, these trends will accelerate. So will the
invention of new products and services, including new ways of tackling today’s
most difficult problems: climate change and pollution, energy demand, the
pressures of urbanization, and the problems that accompany aging populations.
The
Industry 4.0 movement started in Germany, and many of that country’s leading
industrial companies have strong initiatives. According to the Economist, the list includes BASF, Bosch, Daimler, Deutsche
Telekom, Klöckner & Co., and Trumpf. The momentum is rapidly growing
elsewhere as well, particularly in the United States, Japan, China, the Nordic
countries, and the United Kingdom. Such influential global industrial behemoths
as Siemens and GE have fully embraced the approach; both companies’ CEOs and
senior executives have declared
that it is now a core part of their identity
In 2015, PwC surveyed more
than 2,000 companies from 26 countries in the industrial production sectors,
including aerospace and defense; automotive; chemicals; electronics;
engineering and construction; forest products, paper, and packaging; industrial
manufacturing; metals; and transportation and logistics. In this global
Industry 4.0 survey, one-third of the respondents said their company had
already achieved advanced levels of integration and digitization, and 72
percent expected to reach that point by 2020.
This momentum reflects expectations of rapid payoffs in business
results. An overwhelming majority (86 percent) of the survey respondents said
that on the basis of their experience to date, they expected to see both cost
reductions and revenue gains from their advanced digitization efforts. Nearly a
quarter expected those improvements, in both cost savings and revenues, to
exceed 20 percent over the next five years.
The cost savings are
largely a result of greater efficiency and technological integration.
Industry 4.0 replaces redundant legacy systems, such as those for operations
management and enterprise resource planning, with a single, enterprise-wide,
interoperable whole — which is much less expensive. Because user experience in
operational systems has improved in recent years, employees tend to be happier
and more productive with Industry 4.0.
This lowers costs for
training, support, and staff turnover, and raises operations speed. Predictive
analytics, when used to support real-time quality control and maintenance,
contributes to the savings by smoothing operations and reducing breakdowns.
The revenue gains, for their part, come largely from offering new
digital features and products, or from introducing analytics and other new
digital services to customers. In addition, the availability of real-time data
enables companies to offer more personalized products and customized solutions,
which usually generate significantly higher margins than
mass-manufactured offerings. The opportunities are promising enough that
about 55 percent of survey respondents expected to see their investment
returned within two years, a short time considering the amount of capital
required.
The Web of Technologies
As your company becomes active in Industry 4.0, you’ll find the
benefits go far beyond extending your digital reach or selling new types of
products and services. It will establish your company, your employees, and your
entire ecosystem of suppliers, partners, distributors, and customers as a fully
interconnected, integrated digital network, linked to other networks around the
world.
Three aspects of digitization form the heart of an Industry 4.0
approach.
• The full
digitization of a company’s operations, integrated vertically (to
include every function and the entire hierarchy) and horizontally (linking the
suppliers, partners, and distributors in the value chain and transferring data
among them seamlessly). One example is leading-edge inventory management
systems, which connect retailers, distribution centers, transporters,
manufacturers, and suppliers. Each transparently receives data about the
others’ supply levels, places and fulfills orders automatically, and triggers
maintenance and upgrades. This smooths out the gluts and shortages of a typical
supply chain, and enables the chain to compensate for sudden interruptions
(such as those from natural disasters) and to easily test new products and
services in particular geographic locations.
A more advanced example is the design of flexible fabrication
facilities, which use programmable robots to perform most of the operations.
These represent the virtualization of the physical world. New products — and,
indeed, entirely new assembly lines — can be prototyped in software before
being put in place. It is almost effortless to simulate a new plant design,
test it for flaws, and invest in the physical machinery only when it is clear
it will work well. These advances make it much easier and less expensive to
bring new products to market, which in turn makes it easier and less expensive
to test new offerings without a full launch.
• The redesign of
products and services to be embedded with custom-designed software, so that they
become responsive and interactive, tracking their own activity and its results,
along with the activity of other products around them. When captured and
analyzed, the data generated by these products and services indicates how well
they are functioning and how they are used. For example, the equipment used in
a shipping port or on a construction site can now detect an impending
mechanical breakdown and prevent it. The next generation of this equipment will
be able to compare the efficiency of various machines and suggest more efficient
deployment. Another example is motor-vehicle software, which is evolving to
enable cars, trucks, and other vehicles to be repaired via downloaded software
upgrades instead of mechanics.
Industrial products that track their own activity will also
provide powerful insights into those who use them: how they operate, where they
face delays, and how they work around problems. The manufacturers can use this
data to develop profitable new products and services. For example, the
manufacturers of printing machines have traditionally made the bulk of their
revenues from selling and servicing presses. When the presses generate usage
data, the manufacturers can become brokers of press time, knowing when
customers’ presses are available, and negotiating printing prices accordingly.
• Closer interaction
with customers, enabled by these new processes, products, and services. Industry
4.0 makes the value chain more responsive, allowing industrial manufacturers to
reach end customers more directly and tailor their business models accordingly.
Products as diverse as aircraft engines and software are increasingly offered
as services, often on a subscription basis. One of many examples is Atlas
Copco, a manufacturer of air compressors based in Nacka, Sweden, which is
moving away from selling its equipment directly, and, instead, is billing only
for the compressed air that is used. The machines installed at customer sites
can monitor the flow of compressed air and adjust the output according to
customer need.
Industry 4.0 also enables business models that take advantage of
the economics of mass customization, where every product is, in effect, created
as a batch of one. Currently, digital fabrication is used primarily for
prototyping. But as it becomes more sophisticated, and as software and robotics
are integrated into new types of assembly lines, high levels of specification
will become the norm. The appliance manufacturer Haier, for example, already
makes its washing machines and refrigerators in China to order. Customers specify
the features they want on their computers or phones, or at kiosks in Haier’s
retail stores, and those specs are transmitted directly to the assembly line.
Making Industry 4.0 work requires major shifts in organizational
practices and structures. These shifts include new forms of IT architecture and
data management, new approaches to regulatory and tax compliance, new
organizational structures, and — most importantly — a new digitally oriented
culture, which must embrace data analytics as a core enterprise capability.
To understand why analytics are so important to Industry 4.0,
consider the last major operational revolution, the quality and lean production
approach that began in the Japanese auto industry and spread around the world.
Exercises such as the “five whys” and statistical analyses taught manufacturing
engineers — and people on the assembly line — to monitor the variance in their
efforts, seek opportunities for improvement, and attune themselves to the flow
of the work. This resulted in unprecedented levels of quality and reliability.
Industry 4.0 brings that same fine-grained awareness into the machines
themselves; it makes the value chain self-conscious. The machines can be
programmed, for example, to detect when they are wasting material, taking an
inefficient supply chain route, or going awry in some other fashion. They can
bring that information to the attention of company leaders, in the same way
that a GPS navigator can relay information about traffic congestion to help a
driver change course en route.
In the PwC study of Industry 4.0, the most commonly cited
difficulty in building an analytical capability was the lack of people with the
expertise to conduct the analysis. Other prominent concerns — poor data
quality, lack of access to the right data, and lack of top-level support —
reinforce what has long been known: Doing analytics is difficult. The processes
of Industry 4.0 provide mountains of data about customer demands and value
chain logistics. But if you can’t make sense of that data and use it to boost
efficiency, grow closer to your supply chain partners, and develop products and
services your customers actually want, much of the effort is wasted.
Analytics can yield insights that help you reshape your
operational designs. For example, analysis of your customers’ daily and
seasonal use of machinery can help you improve production schedules. Data about
employee recruiting can help you predict your next talent shortfalls.
Production data can illuminate opportunities to eliminate downtime or speed up
throughput. Analytics can also help you balance trade-offs: for instance, the
data might help an oil company decide to place a refinery offshore, even though
the costs are higher, because it will yield more uptime and thus more profits.
Analytics can also help you meet aspirations that seemed nearly
impossible before. For example, many companies struggle to improve their
ecological footprint. Analytics can identify wasted materials and suggest ways
to reclaim them, or to use them as inputs for other industrial processes.
Analytics can also reveal new markets, or opportunities for growth in existing
markets, that were not obvious before.
First Movers and Platforms
There are, of course, many challenges associated with Industry
4.0. It requires openness with data and collaboration, to an extent that feels
uncomfortable at many companies. The requisite technological capabilities and
human skills are often in short supply. It involves new and unfamiliar ways of
organizing production. And, perhaps most daunting, it represents a leap of
faith; investments must be made today, while many of the products and processes
involved in the approach are still unknown.
Nonetheless, companies that
hold back, waiting to see how it all turns out before investing, will fall
behind. As World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab put it in his recent
book The Fourth Industrial Revolution (World Economic Forum,
2016), “Contrary to the previous industrial revolutions, this one is evolving
at an exponential rather than linear pace.… It is not only changing the ‘what’
and the ‘how’ of doing things, but also ‘who’ we are.”
A small group of companies — 71 of the respondents to our survey,
representing only 4 percent of the total — have chosen to lead the way. These
“first movers” say they have invested 6 percent or more of their revenues since
2013 in Industry 4.0 efforts, and also claim high levels of digitization and
competitive advantage. They appear to be finding rapid payoffs in efficiency,
cost savings, and opportunities for innovation; more than half are among the
group expecting to see rapid business returns on their investments.
Some of the advantage enjoyed by first movers has to do with the
virtuous circle they kick off when they move more quickly than competitors. If
first movers can realize their expected cost savings and revenue gains, they
will generate more capital to reinvest in their Industry 4.0 strategies,
enabling them to improve their operational performance — and increase their
lead over competitors — even further. As a result, the investment required for
laggards to catch up will grow. Advanced implementation of Industry 4.0 may
provide enough competitive advantage that it will be seen by investors as a
qualifier for funding.
A still more compelling factor is the platforms that first movers
create. A platform is a nexus of exchange and interoperable technology that
allows a wide range of vendors and customers to seamlessly interact. The most
successful first movers of the software and Internet industries — Amazon,
Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft among them — all cemented their
position with powerful and distinctive platforms. Apple and Google, for
example, collect 30 percent of the revenue for apps sold in their app stores.
First movers on Industry 4.0 will seek a similar advantage. GE and
Siemens are already moving to solidify their position as platform providers.
Each has developed a cloud-based system for connecting machines, devices, and
systems (such as enterprise resource planning systems) from a variety of
companies — facilitating transactions, operations, and logistics seamlessly
among them, and collecting and analyzing data for use by all.
On an industrial platform of this sort, market intelligence
information, gathered from the machinery and the behavior of people in the
system, moves smoothly into product development and manufacturing. Equipment
and software from multiple vendors are connected, with the connections
extending beyond the company’s own walls into the value chain to external distributors
and suppliers. The net effect is to bring customers closer to operations,
analyzing their data to better forecast their needs, improve products, and
develop new offerings, often customized to individuals.
Smaller companies can also establish themselves through the
platform concept. Some solar panel manufacturers, for example, have built
innovative revenue models that are forerunners to Industry 4.0 models. Instead
of directly selling panels to their business customers, they sell the electric
power those panels generate. The manufacturer installs the panels (financing
the hefty up-front costs), and maintains and upgrades them at a compelling
price. In exchange, the customer signs a 20- or 30-year contract. The
manufacturer assumes that no matter what happens during the subsequent decades,
its analytic prowess — incorporating weather, financial, and operational data —
will enable it to adopt changing technologies and deliver energy at low cost.
It will keep the panels clean, use sensors to detect equipment breakdowns
(solar panels have few moving parts, so breakdowns are relatively rare), and
upgrade the panels when photovoltaic technologies improve.
Platforms are successful in the Internet 4.0 context because of a
phenomenon known to economists as “lock-in.” Once a customer commits itself to
a technologically comprehensive platform — especially one that offers multiple
services, with costs that keep diminishing and an expanding network of users —
it is increasingly difficult to switch. Every new customer expects to be able
to connect to its own network of businesses, so new customers sign up as well.
This network effect, as it’s called, further reinforces lock-in.
For example, over the course of 20 or 30 years, a solar panel
manufacturer’s platform will probably be linked through Industry 4.0
relationships to a few other companies’ platforms. These in turn will
influence other choices that solar customers make. As these customers add
interrelated technologies, they will likely find their operations locked into
that ecosystem — while competitors’ customers might be locked into a different
ecosystem. Ultimately, two or three platforms will probably cover most of the
sector, just as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android currently divide the
smartphone sector. In Industry 4.0, as in other technological fields, whoever
owns a platform owns access to the customer, and can place its own brand on the
aggregated work of many other enterprises.
The Globalization Accelerator
As the fourth industrial
revolution binds companies and countries ever more tightly together through
worldwide supply chains and sensor networks, it will increasingly promote
globalization. At the same time, it will link closely to local companies. That helps
explain why the survey results differed considerably by region. Asian
companies, especially those based in Japan and China, expected the greatest
gains from the digitization of Industry 4.0, followed by companies in the
Americas, and then Europe and the Middle East. Japanese companies are already
the most advanced in this field, followed by those based in the U.S. and then
Europe. Companies in all regions expect to catch up within five years.
As Industry 4.0 takes hold around the world, emerging nations
probably have the most to gain. They can leverage digitization to gain
efficiency in their horizontal integration, working with the global
manufacturers to whom they supply all manner of raw materials, parts, and
components. The more closely they align with the platforms of Industry 4.0, the
more potential customers they will be able to reach.
This great integrating force is gaining strength at a time of
political fragmentation — when many governments are considering making
international trade more difficult. It may indeed become harder to move people
and products across some national borders. But Industry 4.0 could overcome
those barriers by enabling companies to transfer just their intellectual
property, including their software, while letting each nation maintain its own
manufacturing networks. Future advances in 3D printing, for example, will
enable virtually any company to set up shop anywhere, and to fabricate
components, spare parts, and (potentially) industrial equipment without having
to ship the finished pieces. Operations will become more global and more local
at the same time.
Unresolved issues abound. For example, will governments change
their customs activities and tax structures to account for a world in which
physical goods of all kinds rapidly decrease in value compared with the
intangibles — intellectual capital and ongoing support, for example — that
distinguish them? Will a digital fabrication plant be considered a full-scale
manufacturing location? Will this type of manufacturing create jobs? Or
supplant them with technology? As the intellectual property value of software
and services increases, will new cybersecurity challenges arise? Or will
cradle-to-grave tracking of products make it easier to enforce global rules
about IP theft, and to trace violations? The centuries-long process of
globalization has always presented new challenges and new risks; now, as we
stand on the brink of an entirely new technological way of life, the challenges
and risks may come in unfamiliar new forms.
Your Company’s Path
Digital capabilities are vital to move forward with Industry 4.0.
Developing them takes time and concentration; a step-by-step approach is
important. But you must move with alacrity, so you don’t forfeit the
first-mover advantage to competitors. These six steps have been critical for
the successful companies we’ve seen.
1. Map
out an Industry 4.0 strategy up front. Evaluate your own
digital maturity now, versus where you need to be. Set clear targets for
closing the gap. Prioritize the measures that will bring the most value to your
business and make sure these are aligned with your overall strategy. Gain
commitment to this approach from the full range of top company leadership, and
make sure that commitment is evident to people throughout the enterprise, who
will base their decisions on what they believe their leaders want and expect.
2. Start with pilot
projects. Use them to establish proof of concept and demonstrate
business value. Not every project will succeed, but they will all help you
learn the approach that works for your company. With early successes, you can
also gain buy-in from the organization, and secure funding for a larger
rollout. For the early pilots, define a relatively narrow initial scope, but
incorporate the end-to-end concept of Industry 4.0 — from materials to the
customer delivery (and services after the sale). Design pragmatically to
compensate for standards or infrastructure that doesn’t yet exist. Collaborate
with digital leaders outside your company’s boundaries; work with startups,
universities, or industry organizations to accelerate your digital innovation.
3. Define the
capabilities you need. Building on the lessons learned in your
pilots, map out in detail the capabilities you need to achieve your goals,
and develop a blueprint for building (or acquiring) those capabilities. Include
technological enablers, such as an agile and highly functional IT
infrastructure with well-designed user interfaces, that can propel your
business processes forward. Also include strategies for recruiting and
developing the right employees and attracting the right companies to work with.
Your success with Industry 4.0 will depend on the skills and knowledge you can
deploy.
4. Become a virtuoso
in data analytics. Success with Industry 4.0 depends on your prowess in
unlocking data possibilities, and using analytics in creative and effective
ways. Establish cross-functional analytics capabilities, tied closely to the
strategic priorities of the whole enterprise, drawing on in-house staff and
outsourced expertise. Develop ways of combining data from different parts of
the business — for example, your quality, logistics, and engineering functions
(which may have had separate and incompatible monitoring systems before this) —
and apply these methods to as many domains as possible, particularly those that
differentiate your company or attract customers. Learn to get value out of data
through intelligent systems design, using real-time analytics to tailor
products to customers and continually improve your processes. Think big, but
start small, with “proof of concept” projects.
5. Transform into a
digital enterprise. Capturing the full potential of Industry 4.0 will probably
entail major changes to your company’s practices and the attitudes underlying
them. Set the tone from the top, with clear leadership, commitment, and vision
from the C-suite and financial stakeholders. Foster a digital culture: All your
employees will need to think and act like technologically adept natives,
willing to experiment, learn new ways of operating, and adapt everyday
processes accordingly. Remember that change doesn’t stop once you’ve
implemented Industry 4.0. Your company will need to reinvent its capabilities
continually, at faster rates than in the past, to stay ahead of the game.
6. Adopt an ecosystem
perspective. Develop complete product and services solutions for your
customers. Use partnerships or align with platforms if you cannot develop a
comprehensive offering on your own. You may find it difficult to share
knowledge with other companies, and you may prefer acquisition to
collaboration. But look for ways to bridge your own company’s boundaries —
perhaps with technical standards — so that you can profit from being part of
platforms that you don’t fully control. The greatest breakthroughs in
performance occur when you actively understand consumer behavior and can
orchestrate a distinctive role for your company within a complex ecosystem of
partners, suppliers, and customers.
Finally, don’t buy the hype. Buy the reality. Industry 4.0 will be
a huge boon to companies that fully understand what it means for them. Change
of this nature will transcend your company’s boundaries — and probably the
national boundaries of the countries where you do business.
by Reinhard Geissbauer, Jesper Vedsø, and Stefan
Schrauf
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/A-Strategists-Guide-to-Industry-4.0?gko=7c4cf
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