Because Industry 4.0 still seems a long way off in practice in mechanical and plant engineering, companies are happy to postpone the topic - and miss out on opportunities.
Industry 4.0 still rare
Whenever we talk to small or medium-sized companies that are subject to the Mechanical or plant engineering They primarily see challenges in process optimisation. Industry 4.0, on the other hand, is rarely on the agenda. This is also evident from an external perspective. While academics are discussing possible future scenarios for the industry, the companies concerned see the increasing digitalisation of their processes as at least a secondary priority (the work of the Hans Böckler Foundation summarises the relevant studies well).
The reasons for this are often the lack of advanced examples, vague cost-benefit calculations and undefined future scenarios, a lack of resources for 4.0 projects and intangible potential of such a project.
uncertainty and indecisiveness
Although it is understandable that impulses and decisions are postponed when there is so much uncertainty, this harbours the risk that a lot of potential for planned restructuring is wasted because everything has to happen quickly. This starts with the observation of the existing processes on. If you know which digital solutions exist or are being developed, you can better decide which ones are best suited to your company.
Integration is the basis in mechanical and plant engineering
Particularly with increasingly automated product chains, it is important that a system interacts smoothly. Investments in individual solutions that may have short-term potential for improvement, but cannot be integrated into a holistic system solution in the long term. However, this is precisely the basis that a company operating in the Industry 4.0 to be successful. To create this basis, it is not necessary to invest large sums in utopian software projects from one day to the next. However, early alignment helps to optimise the system landscape in such a way that processes can be mapped in a network.
There is more on the subject of future-oriented software in mechanical engineering here.
And more on the same topic in plant construction here.
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