A Lack Of Cooperation Along The Value Chain Costs Sales

2023 Author: Hannah Pearcy | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-26 11:39

On behalf of Dassault Systèmes, the International Data Corporation (IDC) analyzed Industry 4.0 initiatives and formulated recommendations for German companies.

The results at a glance:

• Importance is increasing: More and more specialists and managers in Germany are dealing with Industry 4.0.
• Recommendations for reaching the next level: Set the organizational course, break up data silos, define added value for the company, build up digitization know-how, take data security into account.

What role is digital transformation currently playing for German companies? How many Industry 4.0 projects are you planning? How many are you already implementing today? The market research and consulting company IDC surveyed around 200 executives in companies from the manufacturing sector in Germany for the study in August 2016.

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Companies are increasingly concerned with Industry 4.0

The number of specialists and managers dealing with Industry 4.0 has increased from 31% to 53% since 2014. Nevertheless, many German companies are not yet able to implement their Industry 4.0 initiatives. Mark Alexander Schulte, Senior Consultant at IDC Central Europe and author of the study, takes a critical view of this development: “We predict that by 2019, 75% of industrial companies will transform their value chain through digitally networked processes and objects and thus their responsiveness and productivity by 15% will increase. If you do not set the course for Industry 4.0 now, you will be left behind by your competitors.”

Obstacles: Established structures and willingness to change

The respondents stated that they had more projects in the planning and pilot phase than in 2015 (an increase of 5 or 7 percentage points), but made little progress in the implementation. 55% say that too much time is lost due to internal coordination processes. 44% said they even lost sales as a result.

Established structures and a lack of will to change often stand in the way of a broad rollout. For most companies, the topic is mainly located in the IT department. 81% of managers there are involved in Industry 4.0. In engineering, production or logistics, on the other hand, the average is only 45%. Only 5% of the industrial companies surveyed currently have a central data platform that links all specialist areas in the value creation process. 70% of the companies surveyed are working on such a uniform database to accelerate the exchange of information along the value chain.

Digitization position in every third company

To achieve this goal, the financial framework must also be created. Two years ago, only 23% of the factory operators planned to finance it, 69% of the factory operators are already assuming that there will be a budget for Industry 4.0 projects in the coming year.

In addition, almost every third industrial company has created a job for these activities in the past 12 months. In addition to the definition of those responsible or teams, security is one of the core issues. 19% of industrial companies surveyed had to interrupt their production in the past 12 months because third parties tried to access the company's data.

Content of the article:

• Page 1: Lack of cooperation along the value chain costs sales
• Page 2: Growing number of successful examples

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