Posted on 3rd December 2021 by The Manufacturer Partner Content
Zoe Jackson, Vice President Manufacturing and Automotive, and Graham Upton, Chief Architect, Intelligent Industry, Capgemini explore some of the common themes from the digital transformation in manufacturing roundtable discussion at The Manufacturer magazine’s recent Leaders’ Summit.
The Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit was held during Digital Manufacturing Week 2021, where 2,500 manufacturers gathered together in person. The Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit informs manufacturers on how to develop their business models in a practical manner. The event brings together leading professionals to share their experience and knowledge on making the most of the challenges we face and the opportunities that exist to ensure the future growth of manufacturing.
When it comes to digital transformation in manufacturing, the challenges along the journey are multifaceted and complex, and many businesses are in different stages of transformation.
At the Manufacturing Leaders’ Summit, we discussed this topic in detail with many manufacturers together with our co-host from Rolls-Royce – Rashitha Jayasekara, Chief of Digital Manufacturing. We believe there are five broad themes that came out of our discussion.
Challenges implementing Industry 4.0 technologies
Many organisations are pushing new industry 4.0 technologies but are stalling at the proof-of-concept stage. There are many reasons for this which include:
A lack of initial strategy, plan and roadmap for digitisation. Instead, many of the initiatives are disconnected as point solutions and need integrating into the wider ecosystem
- Lack of understanding on how to scale-up the initiative, but then consideration of costs come into play as they can become prohibitive.
- Difficulties proving the return on investment and getting the wider business case approved
- Legacy IT systems that won’t easily integrate with the new technology.
- Fear of change: Technology take-up and adoption is a huge challenge for many organisations and in particular on the shop floor.
Setting up Industry 4.0 technology can be a challenge at first, but ultimately these technologies are designed to future-proof your business. However, just because you’re considering implementing new technologies, it doesn’t mean you have to do it in one big bang. You can simply start with what’s easiest to automate such as moving a box from A to B. Once you’ve got that under control you can begin to scale up and explore more complex forms of technology.
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