Great! That is the first step, to realize the importance of looking to the future trends and becoming possible first movers.

If you’ve come so far as to create a need to transition towards becoming an Industry 4.0 company, we are sure you’re aware of what Industry 4.0 or digital transformation is all about. Simply put, it is an environment of interconnected systems and resources using large data to communicate with each other and reduce decision making time. But why are many of these initiatives failing to deliver or even take off?

This can be attributed to the approach companies are using to start this journey, not acknowledging the cultural change and skills/upskill needed; focusing on buzzword technologies rather than use cases; complicating requirements and communication with tech providers.

At &diligence we want to work with companies who have started saying, “we want to become an Industry 4.0 company” or “we want to start our digital transformation journey”. We then start the groundwork through a digital maturity assessment to understand the culture and skill in the company. Let’s face it, during Industry 2.0 when Ford decided to convert its vehicle assembly onto a conveyor belt it wasn’t an overnight process. The right engineers, the right training, the right attitude to believe in such a system had to be in place for it to become what it is today. Or industry 3.0, when robotics and computer aided machines were introduced, companies realized their pain point of higher capacity but at the same time also realized the workman on the lathe could not operate a CNC without the required skill. Here we are today, at the beginning of industry 4.0 and like in the past 3 industrial revolution, this too will have to start at the culture and skills available and gaps to be filled.

The focus then will shift to identifying use cases and targets which can only be achieved or sped up with digitalization in mind. If there are no financial gains or productivity gains coming out of a technology, we do not want to prioritize them. &diligence assists customers prepare their objectives, scope and convert them into RFQ’s which are clear to technology vendors and you get the right vendors approaching you.

Imagine a meeting room full of management members and engineers during the design of Ford’s 1^st mass production conveyor line throwing requirements at the vendor asking him to design a conveyor that would loop through every station without the current station having to move, with speeds varying at every station because different operators performed differently while at the same time meeting the capacity needed. Chances are it would have been a failure and it would’ve put doubts in everyone’s mind if it was the right technology to implement at the time. That trend continues even today where companies complicate requirements from vendors so much, they lose sight of the goal and end up with a hefty bill and system no one really uses. &diligence has been on both sides of the table having years of experience working with leaderships converting requirements into a structured and agile implementation plan with tech providers that ensures faster lead times and ROI.

At &diligence we want to work with you when you start saying, “we want to become an Industry 4.0 company” until you start saying, “we are an Industry 4.0 company”.