Industry 4.0

Digitisation offers enormous possibilities but also holds entrepreneurial risks such as data security aspects and misinvestments. Especially small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are facing problems by trying to keep pace with digital progress. A helpful tool would be a classification scheme specifically designed for SMEs that shows to which degree the company has already implemented digitisation technologies. Therefore we discuss why such a model is crucial, conduct a comprehensive literature survey and outline a new model.

Industry 4.0-related potentials leading to Industry 4.0 implementation mostly remain unclear. Consequently, this paper analyzes potentials that drive manufacturers to implement Industry 4.0 in five industries. Whereas mechanical and plant engineering as well as electrical engineering companies consider business-model driven, operational as well as ecological and social benefits as relevant for Industry 4.0 implementation, the chemical and steel industry widely disregard business-model driven opportunities. The automotive industry merely focuses on operational benefits provided by Industry 4.0.

Industry 4.0 forces companies to keep their business models up-to-date to keep their competitiveness and to satisfy customer demands. Key words like “individual production” and “lot size one” put pressure on companies to adapt their current production to the new requirements. Especially for companies with a mass production this sounds like a 180° turn. Furthermore, no best-practices for introducing industry 4.0 exist and therefore, one cannot rely on such hold points. Nevertheless, a structured transformation of the own business model towards industry is not impossible.

Trends such as Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things lead to increased networking and integration of various data in the production. At the same time, the increased networking posses challenges regarding security issues. Negative examples involve the unsecured connection of various programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are reachable through the Internet. In part, but also inadvertently, there are additional risks for the production plant. The reasons are the comfortable maintenance of plants as well as using external support for complex problems.

The economic operation of the offshore wind energy turbines is of fundamental importance for the industry. Due to the prevailing weather conditions at sea these operations require optimal plannung and control. This contribution presents the work process and information requirements of an offshore service company. Suitable industry 4.0 technologies are identified to increase information transparency for the supply chain. In conjunction with a cooperative planning and control instrument, a reliable basis of decison-making for the execution of service assignments can be provided. This constitutes a direct contribution to a reduction of operation costs for offshore service logistics.

There are numerous analysis methods available to support engineers working on continuous improvement projects. Digital transformation facilitates to reduce the effort for data acquisition and processing. The Institute of Production Management and Technology and the medical company Dräger have jointly developed a web application for multi-method analysis. This article describes its data structure and technology.

Technological changes related to Industry 4.0 generate new potentials. Hence, it is important to understand which dimensions of a business model to adapt. Industry 4.0 technologies enable a company to offer new products, new services or to achieve efficiency improvements. The Industry 4.0 business model decomposition allows visualising which goal the initiative has, what the value offering is and which processes, technologies and capabilities are needed. As connectivity is a key dimension of Industry 4.0, technologies and systems are needed to connect internal and external processes.

Due to the high competition on the world market, companies look for unique characteristics for their products. One opportunity is to establish a closer relationship to the customer by giving him the possibility to make last-minute change requests. This approach provides a possibility to discuss such a request at a great distance via Augmented Reality. The objective is to evaluate its feasibility and its costs on short notice and in cooperation with the customer.

An investigation of Industry 4.0 project examples of selected companies with a focus on possible resulting business model innovations shows that these innovations can certainly be triggered by Industry 4.0 projects. How-ever, the results of our investigation also show that the share of business model innovations with 22% out of the 158 selected companies is, however, at a rather low range. Disruptive business model innovations are mainly found in companies of the manufacturing industry. Their focus is no longer only on the production or processing of products, but also on a clear added value for the customer. In this article, these aspects are further elaborated and selected study results are presented.

The advancing digitization leads to new possibilities for the design and digital support of business processes. In particular, non-R&D-intensive, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, face great challenges in realizing these potentials. In the context of this article, various application scenarios are outlined. A detailed example of a non-R&D-intensive company shows how the procurement can be supported by the analysis and forecasting of relevant data, e.g. process data or the availability and costs of components, as well as the creation of the offer.