Industry 4.0

Due to the advancing digitalization of business sectors and increasing competitive pressures, industrial companies are forced to promote their own digital transformation to sustain on the market. Here, the literature regards the CFO as a key corporate function to induct digitization initiatives within organizations. The blockchain technology, due to its features of transparency, immutability and cryptography combined with its ability to coordinate data flows of e. g. the IoT or AI, constitutes a suitable instrument for the CFO to meet the requirements of the Industry 4.0. The results are improvements of business processes in regard to efficiency and automation, a relocation of the CFO’s strategic role, improvements of CFO-relevant KPIs through integrating machines into payment networks as well as the emergence of integrated business ecosystems facilitating new forms of inter-organizational collaboration.

In the German manufacturing industry, there is actually one backshoring company on every three offshoring companies. The most important reasons for backshoring are losses in flexibility and delivery capability as well as quality problems. Results of a large firm-level survey in the German manufacturing industry show a clear, positive correlation between the use of technologies for the digital integration of production processes (Industry 4.0) and the backshoring propensity of German companies. This paves the way for local value chains in close proximity to important customers.

In light of the three major global transformations of globalization, digitalization and sustainabilization industrial production faces new challenges and targets. On the one hand industrial modernization in the direction of digital manufacturing (Industry 4.0) has to cope with the new protectionist policies that have started in the United States as a countermovement to globalization. On the other hand, the new vocal demand for climate protection and environmental quality assurance puts pressure on the industry to align its policies with the demand for ecological modernization. It is essential that industrial policy makers include not only efficiency goals as targets for their investment plans but also environmental quality and social compatibility. Keywords:

Industry 4.0 describes the digitization and interconnection of industrial value creation. So far, economic and technological potentials have been considered in particular, while ecological opportunities through industry 4.0 receive less attention. This article examines the ecological potentials of Industry 4.0 in terms of resources, energy consumption, logistics and transport, waste and emissions, from which propositions are derived. The study attempts to better understand of the ecological potentials of Industry 4.0 in order to contribute to more sustainable industrial value creation.

The use of key figures allows for a comprehensive consideration of the performance characteristics of a company and serves as basis for decisions. The mapping of systems in a Digital Twin increases the amount of data and also its timeliness. The paper describes a holistic, transferable KPI network that can be used to manage companies. Strategic goals can be operationalized through the KPI network. Using an industry example, advantages and possibilities of using such a network are demonstrated.

Inadequate communication with media discontinuities makes it difficult to implement simulataneous engineering. Missing process data prevent data-based control measures and the layout of design adaptations to unfinished components. Therefore, the subject of this article is the description of a system for real-time data acquisition and the digitalization of the information flow in shipbuilding.