Many companies have recently taken the leap to Industry 4.0 technology to transform how products are designed, made, and maintained. While its roots are in manufacturing, Industry 4.0 is about more than just production.  Smart technologies can fully transform organizations: how they make sense of information and act upon it to achieve operational excellence and continually improve the consumer or partner experience. 

According to the World Economic Forum (2022) ”Industry 4.0 refers to the “smart” and connected production systems designed to sense, predict, and interact with the physical world, so as to make decisions that support production in real-time and estimates suggest an increase in production line availability by 5 to 15%. It can also offer opportunities for energy saving and sustainability through optimization..So far, the US and China lead in publications and patents”.

As a pioneer in the Industry 4.0 movement, OHEL Technologies understands that “improving decision-making processes is a recurring focus and a primary objective in deploying these technologies” (Forget et al., 2021). OHEL provides Industry 4.0 hardware and software solutions that have allowed our clients to transition into Industry 4.0 successfully. AI algorithms turn it into actionable insights. The result is manufacturing intelligence that generates accurate predictions, alerts on production floor issues, and helps to run your business much more efficiently.

Among the benefits of these software solutions that are reflected in efficient strategies are the following:

1. Efficient processes. Through the knowledge of the areas of opportunity, knowing the behavior of users with the various tools with which they interact for the performance of their work, “many authors agree on the 4.0 technologies capability to enhance communication, flexibility, real-time feedback, and improve how humans make decisions to solve problems in a production context (Forget et al., 2021).

2. Improve resource planning. Take OHEL example again, considering the information provided by the software allows you to understand which tools are used more or less, for which processes, and who specifically uses them. By having this information, you can plan efficiently, optimizing resources and reducing costs “while all occupations are made up of activities with different potential for automation, the work activities that have the highest potential for immediate automation typically contain tasks that depend on pre-specified routine physical activities, data collection and processing” (Karacay, 2018).

3. Empowering human talent. It is no surprise to talk about the importance of human talent in organizations. “Creating future workforce involves not only attracting and developing new talent needed, but also re-skilling current employees through training programs as well as re-designing work processes for reducing the skill mismatch between jobs and employees” (Karacay, 2018). Considering human talent with the Industry 4.0 benefits formula, it will help to reduce costs and generate more efficient processes, but all of this is impossible if your collaborators do not feel they can trust their skills for all coming innovative changes. It is known that “when employees are struggling, experiencing negative emotions or feeling burned out, your organization can suffer. “ (Gallup, 2023).

Industry 4.0 signifies the promise of a new Industrial Revolution—one that marries advanced production and operations techniques with smart digital technologies to create a digital enterprise that would not only be interconnected and autonomous but could communicate, analyze, and use data to drive further intelligent action back in the physical world. It represents the ways in which smart, connected technology would become embedded within organizations, people, and assets. Such advancements are marked by the emergence of capabilities such as robotics, analytics, artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies, nanotechnology, quantum computing, wearables, the Internet of Things, additive manufacturing, and advanced materials.

Bibliography:

What is “Industry 4.0” and what will it mean for developing countries? (2022, November 8). World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/what-is-industry-4-0-and-could-developing-countries-get-left-behind/#:~:text=is%20Industry%204.0%3F-,Industry%204.0%20refers%20to%20the%20%E2%80%9Csmart%E2%80%9D%20and%20connected%20production%20systems,%2C%20energy%20efficiency%2C%20and%20sustainability.

Gallup, Inc. (2023, March 2). Indicators of Workplace Culture & Societal Health - Gallup. Gallup.com. https://www.gallup.com/394169/global-indicators.aspx

Karacay, G. (2018). Talent Development for Industry 4.0. Springer International Publishing EBooks, 123–136. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57870-5_7

Rosin, F., Forget, P., Lamouri, S., & Pellerin, R. (2021). Impact of Industry 4.0 on decision-making in an operational context. Advances in Production Engineering & Management, 16(4), 500–514. https://0-doi-org.biblioteca-ils.tec.mx/10.14743/apem2021.4.416