Industry 4.0 has become a buzzword in the manufacturing industry today. There is a reason for it. There has not been a full-scale change in the way we manufacture goods since the days of Henry Ford. The PLC (programmable logic controller), MES (manufacturing execution system), first generation robots have all made incremental improvements to efficiency but not to the same extent. Now with Industry 4.0 the change is beginning to happen.
But what is Industry 4.0? The danger of the buzzwords is that many service providers are trying to label their legacy services and solutions as Industry 4.0 and confusing clients. We at HfS Research believe that Industry 4.0—or the fourth industrial revolution—is the confluence of many technologies coming together in manufacturing for the creation of smart factories with significantly high efficiency, productivity, quality and flexibility than the current state. It will enable mass customization in manufacturing. While it will take few decades to enable promises of mass customization at scale, the journey has started.
While most engineering, consulting, technology, and business process services in manufacturing industry offered today (even legacy services!) can help enterprises in their Industry 4.0 journey in some way, we have identified 13 enabling technologies that we believe are critical for any enterprise to accelerate its Industry 4.0 journey.
To make Industry 4.0 real for our enterprise clients, we are launching our Industry 4.0 study, which will focus exclusively on R&D, plan, implement and operate services around the 13 enabling technologies shown in the chart. Most of these technologies are in the early stages of adoption, as we will discuss in the forthcoming Blueprint Guide.
Bottom Line: HfS Research Blueprint Guide: Industry 4.0 Service 2017 will cut the chase and make Industry 4.0 real for our enterprise clients.
This study will help enterprise clients understand the real case applications of different Industry 4.0 offerings along with capabilities and offerings of the service providers in the market today. We will work to understand the different ways that this functionality is delivered and how it may evolve. We will evaluate about 15 service providers on their innovation and execution capabilities in this emerging and exciting space. If you have any interesting Industry 4.0 services story to share, please contact [email protected].
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