Opportunities and Barriers in realizing Industry 4.0

In the last 2 articles, Data Strategy in the Cloud Era and Rise of the Edge , we established the confluence of big data, cloud + edge infrastructure needed to address the areas of improvement in industrial settings. In this article #4, we profile some of the opportunities and barriers during the digital industrial transformation journey.

In this article, we will focus on asset-intensive industries – heavy manufacturing, industrial OEMs, energy & utilities, and mining & metals – and the connected worker. The Covid-19 aftermath accelerated Industry 4.0 initiatives as part of the initial $1 trillion digital transformation market across industries. The next $20 trillion wave of innovation and wealth creation (termed Industry 5.0) over this decade (2020-30) has already started, emphasizing continuous improvement of the customer-connected enterprise. Connected solution providers with a meaningful position today in the initial digital transformation of Industrials (Industry 4.0) will earn the right to play and the right to win in the next wave of Industry 5.0 transformations, enabled by the confluence of the cloud, big data, AI + Analytics, IoT, and Automation.

Per Deloitte survey, nearly three-fourths of enterprises who express interest in adopting IoT solutions are looking for new business opportunities and ways to fortify existing products. Yet, only 13?percent of IoT use cases between 2009-2013 targeted revenue growth or innovation.?IoT providers revert to incremental solutions that offer diminishing returns and may not offer enough value to outweigh the perceived risks for some enterprises. Even when the same technology can bolster revenues, these IOT solution provider have yet to articulate a proposition for using IoT to grow revenue, shape new products and services, or innovate processes and products, all of which can offer increasing returns over time.

Connected Workspaces

The new, powerful dynamics to the speed and scope of Industry 4.0 transitions gets untethered workers and customers dislodge the otherwise change-resistant force of people and their entrenched habits. Now remote, mobile, and online, advantage-seeking firms can speed restructuring and redeployment of their workers. So, the transformational capability of persistent supervision of front-line industrial workers will become a beachhead for digital innovations.

Many Industry 4.0 initiatives have stalled, and in the proverbial “proof-of-concept purgatory.” Most initiatives failed to attain projected ROI and/or produce sustainable improvements. Why? Because front-line workers, technical specialists, and supervisors do not produce a consistent flow of activity data, like machines do.

Industry 4.0 awaits what leaders and innovators call connected workspaces. Connected workspaces provide intelligent assistance to industrial workers, enabling them to get their jobs done faster, better, and safer. These workspaces also fill the void in Industry 4.0 data spheres with time-stamped, user activity data for the work performed with a complete 360-degree context.

Data Flywheels

Amazon, Tesla, Haier, and all other all-digital juggernauts use their data about the customer, users, product functions, supply chains, and workers to drive continuous improvement of value: GROWTH.

Amazon uses the metaphor of business flywheel to describe how it drives continuous improvement of customer experience. A closer look reveals several data-driven process improvement systems called “data flyers.”

To prevail in the Industry 4.0 and the subsequent Industry 5.0 wave, today the connected solution providers will need to operationalize their business and data flywheels. They must bring powerful, new datasets and insights to their industrial customers’ business flywheel.

Front-line Worker: Productivity and Safety

While industrials have started digital transformations, it has not quite reached the front-line workers. Productivity and margin improvements are not merely about cost-cutting, layoffs, or other slash-and-burn strategies, these transformed digitally-enabled processes must become a crucial part of the worker’s day-to-day role, thereby, improving safety and compliance. For proper buy-in and optimal adoption of digital transforms, it is critical to design and build these capabilities with the front-line workers, master technicians, and their supervisors – making them the “digital heroes!”. These initiatives must simultaneously empower the technicians with procedural instructions and guidance within the operational context while offering process visibility and traceability to management.

Why improving front-line worker productivity (efficiency) and safety is so hard? NO DATA. Traditionally, beyond clocking in and out and completed work orders, we do not really know what happened out there. Why? Data voids.

The data voids are dangerous blind spots in industrial operations. If organizations had user-activity and task/work completion data as well as video, audio and shared visual notes from each worker or maintenance technician, it would improve overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), labor efficiency and agility, and safety and operational risk profile of industrial operations. In fact, it could enable continuous micro-scale improvement throughout the asset lifecycle and its operation.

Industrial digital transformations must consider process, equipment, operations/IT platforms, and people perspectives. As depicted below, technology develops faster than people’s ability to absorbing and, therefore, lacks expected benefits in a timely manner.

Operations technology and IT must collaborate to collect IOT data from equipment sensors, machines, industrial automation, and manufacturing and operations support systems.?As noted in my earlier posts, IOT at scale is a Team sport that must work with data-driven systems of intelligence as well as systems of engagement, particularly, front-line worker experience on mobile devices (i.e., tablets, phones) and now augmented reality (AR) wearables, i.e., head-mounted computers.

• AR wearables allow workers to interact with physical objects (e.g., machines) with both hands leveraging contextual machine- and human-generated data in a single view.
• AR enhances human capabilities by providing self- or remote-guided instructions and facilitating decision-making.
• Smartphones and tablets can handle AR and, therefore, its adoption has accelerated over the last 5 years – making AR a complementary technology that will unlock the full potential of Industrial IoT.

Barriers in realizing Industry 4.0

As reported in a survey by the Harvard Business Review, one of the biggest barriers to digital transformation is a businesses’?inability to experiment quickly. We discussed the proverbial “proof-of-concept purgatory.” Traceability in the industrial customer-connected enterprise moves beyond inspection of product flow throughout the manufacturing and supply chain. For example, persistent data-producing inspection provides the basis for continuous improvement where OEMs can also add value across the asset lifecycle.

Digital transforms—customer-connected enterprises—need oceans of data. Lack of unique and high-volume data streams have emerged as the primary barrier in realizing Industry 4.0. What universal problem do connected workspaces solve? Persistent supervision and performance support for industrial operations.

The SmarTECHS software expands the traditional line-of-sight supervision to a real time, remote and collaborative team capability in industrial settings for testing, inspection, maintenance, certification, etc. So what?

• Persistent supervision provokes a more mindful performance of the tasks at hand. This in turn drives implicit learning, another form of on-the-job training.
• Combined with other modes of supervision, it supports continuous micro-scale improvement of OpEx, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), and compliance.
• Given enhanced traceability, Persistent Supervision delivers compliance at negligible added cost.
• Connected Workspaces enable industrial producers to exploit rapid, surgical restructuring of core operations.

Connected Workspaces from SmarTECHS

As a Connected solution provider, SmarTECHS offers connected workspaces that address the Connected Worker issues.

Remote Expertise Networks assist isolated operators, safety engineers and line workers in permitting, commissioning, troubleshooting and repairs.

Responsive Inspection makes a large, scalable improvement: overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), safety, compliance, and operations resilience.

Adaptive Microlearning powers on-the-job training and just-in-time performance support.

Performance Analytics for continuous improvement of job cycles.

Concluding Remarks

As noted above, connected workspaces must co-exist with operations and information technology (OT/IT) organizations, spanning industrial automation, operations support systems, data, analytics + insights, and supporting infrastructure(s).

To unleash the power of data with connected workspaces for Industrials, connected solution providers must team up with industrial OEMs and a partner ecosystem of business/ operations consultants, independent software vendors (ISVs), cloud & connectivity providers, and system integrators. These transformations need continued stakeholder alignment + commitment. In these industrial settings, CyberSecurity remains a critical issue for OT + IT communications from a smart factory and connected workers to the Enterprise IT. Last but not the least, an industrial needs organizational change management to successfully integrate business process, people, and enabling technologies, thereby, helping Industrials realize the business case for digital transformation.

What do you think??