The big problem for Industry 4.0 is that most manufacturing companies do not have a live view of production in their factories. Which means the sector’s big hopes about AI-assisted automation and efficiency are unrealistic. This is the conclusion of a poll of 1,200 c-suite execs and IT/OT ‘leaders’ in various manufacturing sectors by Industry 4.0 device specialist Zebra Technologies. Only 15 percent of manufacturers have ‘real-time visibility’ of their production lines, it finds; and so most of them do not have enough critical data, anyway, to justify futuristic investments in AI.
Actually, the company’s UK office has drawn the conclusions mostly about the state of Industry 4.0 in Europe, making comparison with the global findings in the study. The 15-percent figure – representing companies with so-called ‘work-in-progress’ (WIP) monitoring across their entire manufacturing processes – is a European statistic; it is marginally lower than for the rest of the world (16 percent), as all the poll results are. Over half (54 percent) of manufacturing companies in Europe expect AI to drive growth by 2029, compared to 61 percent globally.
Overall, nine in 10 manufacturing companies are “prioritising” digital transformation; they want to “improve data management and leverage new technologies” to “enhance visibility and quality”, writes Zebra Technologies. But there is less progress and more caution among manufacturing companies in Europe, it seems. The poll, conducted as an online survey by Azure Knowledge Corporation, covered manufacturing firms in the automotive, electronics, food and beverage, and pharmaceuticals industries in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
The splits are not given. The message, invariably prescribed from the start, is that digital change is a “priority” and visibility is essential, but that the idea of a “fully connected factory” remains “elusive” because a “large visibility gap exists”. Zebra Technologies, of course, provides “visibility” solutions in the form of ruggedised handheld and wearable devices for manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, retail, and sundry industrial field operations. It cites certain obstacles: “the cost and availability of labour, scaling technology solutions, and the convergence of IT and OT”.
But visibility – getting data out of a factory (in the case of manufacturing; but out of any industrial setup, also) and into the hands of shop-floor staff, via properly deployed IoT sensor systems, standard manufacturing execution (MES) and lifecycle management (LMS) systems, and Zebra-style industrial devices – is the “first step”, the survey data shows, says Zebra Technologies. “Visibility is the first step… to leverage data more effectively to identify, react and prioritise problems and projects [to] deliver incremental efficiencies across the manufacturing process,” it writes.
At the same time, all of these challenges are interlinked. About half (49 percent in Europe, 57 percent globally) of manufacturing companies expect to increase visibility across production (and throughout their supply chains) by 2029, but one-third say “getting IT and OT to agree on where to invest” is a “key barrier to digital transformation”. Meanwhile, almost everyone (84 percent in Europe, 86 percent globally) is struggling to keep pace with tech innovation, the survey reveals, and to “securely integrate devices, sensors, and technologies” across the board.
Nearly three-quarters of companies (71 percent in Europe, 73 percent globally) plan to reskill labour to enhance data and technology usage skills; around seven in 10 (62 percent in Europe, 70 percent globally) expect to “augment workers with mobility-enabling technology”, writes Zebra Technologies – with handheld and wearable mobile devices of different sorts, plus with workforce management software. The point, in the end, is to put focus on the factory workforce, as well, and not just on the factory output.
Manufacturing leaders across the C-Suite, IT and OT understand how labour initiatives must extend beyond improving worker efficiency and productivity with technology. Retraining/upskilling and career development are cited by about two thirds of respondents as essential to attract future talent – and, thereby ultimately, to keep the focus on long-term factory output and viability. Elsewhere, at a global level, manufacturing companies cite standards and regulations (29 percent), data integration (27 percent), and traceability (27 percent) as issues.
In terms of technologies, manufacturing companies are most interested in the next five years to deploy robotics (65 percent), machine vision (66 percent), radio frequency identification (RFID; 66 percent), and fixed industrial scanners (57 percent) to drive their digital change stories, the survey finds.
