Mechanical and plant engineering: First steps into Industry 4.0

Because Industry 4.0 still seems a long way off in mechanical and plant engineering, companies are happy to postpone the topic - and miss opportunities.

Industry 4.0 still rare

Whenever we speak to small or medium-sized businesses, the Mechanical or plant engineering These companies mainly see challenges in process optimisation. Industry 4.0, on the other hand, is rarely on the agenda. This is also shown by the view from the outside. While academia discusses possible future scenarios for the industry, the companies concerned see increasing digitalisation of their processes as at least secondary (the work of the Hans Böckler Foundation summarises the relevant studies well).

The reasons for this are often the lack of advanced examples, the vague cost-benefit calculation and the undefined future scenarios, lack of resources for 4.0 projects and intangible potential of such a project.

uncertainty and indecisiveness

Although it is understandable that with so much uncertainty, impulses and decisions are postponed, this harbors the risk that a lot of potential for a planned restructuring is wasted, because then everything has to happen quickly. It starts with observing the existing ones processes on. Anyone who is informed about which digital solutions exist or are being developed can better decide which ones best suit the company.

Integration is the basis in mechanical and plant engineering

Especially with increasingly automated product chains, it is relevant that a system interacts smoothly. Investments in individual solutions that have short-term potential for improvement, but cannot be integrated into a holistic system solution in the long term. However, that is precisely the basis that a company operating in the Industry 4.0 wants to be successful needs. In order to create this basis, large sums of money do not have to be invested in utopian software projects overnight. However, an early alignment helps to optimize the system landscape in such a way that the 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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