How to implement Industry 4.0 in a traditional factory base

So the question is, how would you go about converting a traditional manufacturing factory setup into a super efficient Industry 4.0 or an IioT Smart Factory base?

Would you go in with a bang and do a capital investment upfront to start a Smart Factory revolution or would you go in with smaller (and may be slower) steps to bring about Smart Factory change one production area at a time, one factory at a time and one region at a time until a Global Smart Factory status is achieved?

My vote is certainly for the latter.

It has smaller chance of failure and the earlier successes will boost confidence of stake holders, which will build upon itself to gain speed of Smart Factory conversion later on.

The big bang approach may get faster deployment but it also has a bigger chance of failure - if it is not thought over thoroughly e.g. Currently there are many technologies which collectively form the Smart Factory such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, NLP, Big Data Analytics, Wireless, Machine Vision etc.

To get the best results these technologies have to seamlessly and collaboratively work together which will require huge upfront capital investment.

Therefore if you are thinking of changing your traditional manufacturing base into a Smart Factory then my recommendation is to go small in the beginning and then steadily build on the successes.