The term Industry 4.0 has firmly established itself everywhere. It’s uttered by speakers at conferences, mentioned by sales representatives of every company offering anything to industry that can be even loosely associated with technology, and peers out from every marketing brochure of any self-respecting supplier of “modern industrial solutions”. In fact, colloquially speaking, Industry 4.0 is about to fall out of our refrigerator.
Following this narrative, we get the impression that modern technology permeates today’s factories – surely all production workers are already wearing VR goggles, supported by AI and blockchain at every step, cooperating daily with intelligent robots, and transport in facilities is fully autonomous. Planners sit in front of walls of monitors and examine the nuances of ongoing processes on a hologram straight out of “Minority Report”, while technologists, like Tony Stark, use artificial intelligence to create super-advanced solutions on the fly, which instantly go straight to production thanks to advanced digital twins and perfect 3D printing technology…
If that’s the case, we can consider the fourth industrial revolution complete and start thinking about what its fifth iteration will be. Right?
Well, anyone who has ever crossed the threshold of a real factory knows how amusing the above story is. For laypeople, here’s a small spoiler: the real picture is as far from the above as possible. Today’s factories, yes, can have some nice, modern gadgets on board, but talking about any coherent ecosystem is a far-fetched exaggeration. Suffice it to say that most (even very advanced) manufacturing plants still can’t do without paper and Excel as their main analytical tool. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing Excel. It’s a powerful and very versatile tool, but in today’s era of super-advanced and specialized systems, it should only play a marginal supporting role. But that’s not happening. Why?
Spis treści
Technology at Your Fingertips
Why exactly can’t we create the picture I described above? In the consumer world, we can find many working solutions such as VR, AI, as well as many communication tools, design programs, 3D printing, etc. All the technologies described above are already quite well developed, user-friendly and – most importantly – accessible to the average person. For some reason, however, their use in industry is very limited, despite the fact that virtually everyone involved in this field agrees that using these technologies would take production to a completely new level.
The problem with production digitization therefore doesn’t lie in the tools – these are not only available but also quite popular and widely used by consumers. So the building blocks exist, but there’s another problem. Namely, the question of “what to build with them”?
Start with “why”
From my personal observations, there are several types of companies in the market with different approaches to digitization, or more broadly, to process management. However, before I present their classification, I would like to stop at the first, fundamental issue, namely the question: why is digitization needed at all and what areas should it cover? The entire article focuses on the manufacturing industry, so I’ll limit these considerations to this sector only.
The question “why” is the absolute foundation of Lean, as it helps find the sources of problems and focus actions where they will actually bring the expected effects. If we consider the lack of digitization as a problem, and in today’s rapidly changing and highly competitive business environment, it’s hard to think otherwise, it seems crucial to find the answer to this very question: why should we digitize? The answer to this question allows us, consequently, to also answer: what and how should we do it.
Depending on who in the company we ask about the purpose of digitization, we’ll hear completely different answers. Several conclusions can be drawn here, I can think of three, two of which are fundamentally wrong, but at first glance seem sensible, which may be the cause of many problems you notice in your enterprise.
Local Perspective is a Cognitive Error
When we examine the needs of different specialists from different departments, we will certainly create a very extensive list of issues requiring immediate improvement. Analyzing the responses, we will probably come to one of two fundamentally wrong, but quite common conclusions.
First conclusion: in our company, there are many different processes and many different departments. Their needs are so different from each other that we need to individually satisfy the needs of each one, digitizing key areas for them until finally everything starts working well. Small spoiler: no, it won’t, but more on that later.
Second conclusion: in our company, there are many different processes and many different departments. Their needs are so different from each other that it’s impossible to reconcile their interests and our company cannot be comprehensively digitized. It will be best to develop a different management system and use technologies marginally in local improvements, and then everything will start working. Answer and hint as above. No, it won’t.
So is there no proper solution? Well, there is, but it’s not visible from a local perspective.
The CEO Will Tell You the Truth
Military commanders realized centuries ago that while charging at the enemy in the front line might earn you a richly decorated tombstone and a few laudatory songs, the real strategist’s task before battle isn’t sharpening their sword. On the contrary – the strategist climbs a nearby hill. The view from there allows them to assess the terrain, the location of their own and enemy troops, and not drown in a sea of insignificant details like whether the soldiers are wearing regulation uniforms.
So if you’re thinking about digitization as more than just a cool gadget, you’ll need the CEO’s opinion, or rather their perspective. But before we get to that, let’s try to deal with the earlier conclusions that I arbitrarily judged as wrong, so I probably should defend my position.
But about that – in the next article…