In the manufacturing industry, you constantly have to navigate one storm after the other. You have to win the rat race with your competitors, cut costs, avoid downtime and do increasingly more with less (and less experienced) staff. And that’s not all, because the fourth industrial revolution – in other words Industry 4.0 – is a shift to a higher gear.  

If you want to stay ahead of your competitors and benefit from this development, you MUST actively go with this flow. In fact, McKinsey estimates that this revolution could potentially unlock more than $100 billion in value within the manufacturing industry in the U.S. market alone. What exactly does Industry 4.0 involve? How do you get ready for it? And what can you already do today? We’ll show you!

After the steam engine, electricity and the computer, AI, robotics and the Internet of Things are now driving forward the next new revolution. It is known by several names, like Industry 4.0 and Smart Industry. ‘Smart’ here refers to devices that act autonomously, software that is self-learning, and intelligent devices that are interconnected, like software that continuously measures the temperature of a machine and activates cooling systems on its own, for example

To state the obvious; all these new technologies run on data collection and data exchange. That, then, is the basis of Smart Industry: production machines, robots and software that exchange big data among themselves via the corporate network or the internet, to control themselves and other connected components. This may seem beyond the horizon, especially in view of the fact that your employees still walk around with a stack of paper forms during maintenance rounds.

Even so, you need to get on board.

You clearly need to get on board to stay ahead of your competitors, but you should also see it as the solution to many of your current problems: staff shortages, high downtime, the struggle to keep your costs down and maintain an overview of the hundreds of processes running under your roof. 

Indeed, by investing in automation tools, McKinsey estimates that you can achieve a productivity increase of 20 to 30 percent in collaboration-intensive processes such as maintenance. Those are numbers you can do something with. And – if you take it one step at a time – the good news is that transitioning to Smart Industry is not as challenging as you think. But where do you start? 

Your organisation consists of a plethora of departments and components: accounts, sales, inventory management, the production process, the internal service process, machines, robots and other devices. They may all seem vastly different, but they are all brought together in your ERP system, which is where you can control this varied landscape. This is the ideal place for sharing data, so it is also the key to Smart Industry. If you want to surf the crest of this revolution, you must ensure that:  

  1. Your ERP system is up to date.

  2. All data is freely accessible to all software and devices within your company (i.e. no data silos).

  3. You have structured your data well.

  4. You know what data you have and how to put it to good use.

  5. The ERP system is accessible not only on a desktop, but also on mobile devices.

Is your ERP up to par? Then you can optimise and easily unlock your data. This opens up many automation opportunities and the chance to use AI. The automotive industry, for example, is already making widespread use of these benefits. When assembling a vehicle body, robots retrieve information from the ERP system. They use the model information to assemble the right vehicle body, know when a particular part is needed and are capable of ‘detecting’ a damaged part. In the latter case, the robot requests a new part or schedules a repair through your ERP software. As a result, you need fewer people to monitor the production process, your turnaround time is faster, and you can reduce costs accordingly. This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the possibilities open to you. 

Even though the automotive industry example sounds very futuristic, it is actually already a reality. How can you move in this direction? That depends mostly on the degree of digitalisation in your plant. Do your processes still involve a large amount of paperwork? If so, it is imperative that you invest in digitalisation.

You also need to make all data centrally available so you can edit and add data from any location. What if you have already done all this? Then it may be time to reconfigure your ERP system and set it up to work with automation software, AI and ML.

Exactly how you get your plant ready for Smart Industry is specific to your situation. So feel free to contact us to discuss how you can take those first steps – and what technologies can provide support. We look forward to getting you on the right track and helping you take full advantage of these developments.