I had the pleasure of attending Frost & Sullivan’s Manufacturing Leadership Council plant tour and roundtable discussion at Merck & Co., Inc.’s Maurice R. Hilleman Center for Vaccine Manufacturing in Durham, NC the last week in November. As the CEO of an Industry 4.0 software provider, I found the experience invaluable in keeping a pulse on the challenges faced by manufacturers today.
My main takeaway from the tour visit was learning more about the prevailing issues facing the manufacturing industry on what to do with big data and Industrial IoT (IIoT) projects. The two most common questions I heard during the roundtable discussion with industry veterans and executives were:
- “We don’t know where to start with our Industry 4.0 projects,” and,
- “We already collect lots of data, but don’t know what to do with it.”
These two sentiments were reiterated by one manufacturer after another, prompting me to write this blog post and prescribe a pain-free guide for manufacturers to successfully invest in IIoT.
Click here to read more on the Manufacturing Leadership Council’s blog.
Will Smart Factories Replace Humans? No.
