Use cases:
Supply chain management and optimization:
Industry 4.0 solutions give businesses greater insight, control, and data visibility across their entire supply chain. By leveraging supply chain management capabilities, companies can deliver products and services to market faster, cheaper, and better quality to gain an advantage over less-efficient competitors.
Predictive maintenance/analytics:
Industry 4.0 solutions give manufacturers the ability to predict when potential problems will arise before they happen. Without IoT systems in place at your factory, preventive maintenance happens based on routine or time. In other words, it’s a manual task. With IoT systems in place, preventive maintenance is much more automated and streamlined. Systems can sense when problems are arising or machinery needs to be fixed and can empower you to solve potential issues before becoming more significant. Predictive analytics allows companies to not just ask reactive questions like, “what has happened?” or “why did it happen?” but also proactive questions like, “what is going to happen,” and “what can we do to prevent it from happening?” These types of analytics can enable manufacturers to pivot from preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance.
Asset tracking and optimization:
Industry 4.0 solutions help manufacturers become more efficient with assets at each stage of the supply chain, allowing them to keep a better pulse on inventory, quality, and optimization opportunities relating to logistics. With IoT in place at a factory, employees can get better visibility into their assets worldwide. Standard asset management tasks such as asset transfers, disposals, reclassifications, and adjustments can be streamlined and managed centrally and in real-time.
Internet of Things and the cloud:
A key component of Industry 4.0 is the Internet of Things that is characterized by connected devices. Not only does this help internal operations, but through the use of the cloud environment where data is stored, equipment and operations can be optimized by leveraging the insights of others using the same equipment or to allow smaller enterprises access to technology they wouldn’t be able to on their own.
Benefits
Industry 4.0 spans the entire product life cycle and supply chain— design, sales, inventory, scheduling, quality, engineering, and customer and field service. Everyone shares informed, up-to-date, relevant views of production and business processes—and much richer and more timely analytics.
As more tech-savvy companies continue to optimize logistics and supply chain management, companies need to be investing in technology and solutions that help you improve and optimize your operation. It makes you more competitive, especially against disruptors. To stay competitive, your company must have the systems and processes to provide the same service level (or better) to your customers and clients that they could be getting from a competitor.
It makes your team more robust and more collaborative. Companies that invest in Industry 4.0 solutions can increase efficiency, boost collaboration between departments, enable predictive and prescriptive analytics, and allow people including operators, managers, and executives to more fully leverage real-time data and intelligence to make better decisions while managing their day-to-day responsibilities.
It allows you to address potential issues before they become big problems. Predictive analytics, real-time data, internet-connected machinery, and automation can all help you be more proactive when it comes to addressing and solving potential maintenance and supply chain management issues.
Industry 4.0 technology helps you manage and optimize all aspects of your manufacturing processes and supply chain. It allows you to trim costs, boost profits, and fuel growth. It gives you access to the real-time data and insights you need to make smarter, faster decisions about your business, which can ultimately boost the efficiency and profitability of your entire operation.