I was thrilled when Forbes invited me to contribute to their website on the future of manufacturing. Given all the time I spend speaking to people in manufacturing about Industry 4.0, its competitive advantages, and how they can leverage their factory data to improve production, I’m excited to now share my perspective with the readers on Forbes.
Below is an excerpt from my first article in the series. Join me every other week for my take on how manufacturers should approach Industry 4.0 in addition to other challenges facing the industry.
“Manufacturers are under constant pressure. They need to decrease waste while increasing uptime, throughput and quality to continue to compete effectively. Manufacturers are no stranger to disruption either, and in recent years lean manufacturing practices and automation have applied further pressure on them, even forcing some out of the game altogether.
The next disruptive phase in manufacturing is already well underway. “Industry 4.0” builds on the previous three phases of industrialization – mechanization, mass production and controls. It’s an intelligent production environment enabled by an integrated platform of enterprise data systems, the Internet of things (IoT) and cloud computing.”
Industry 4.0 provides insight into variables or anomalies that can cause performance issues, such as machine failures, bottlenecks or waste, and it is going to completely transform the manufacturing sector and fundamentally change the established relationship between the makers and consumers of products.
