How Industry 4.0 Solves Production Problems
Industry 4.0 is a trending topic in the manufacturing world. The new technologies coming with the fourth industrial revolution – AI, IIoT, and big data – are giving executives in the manufacturing industry a lot to think about.
Image credit: forbes.com
Although aware that there’s no escape to the evolution of technology, most manufacturers are currently facing a deadlock phase, trying to figure out what exactly is at stake in leading or lagging behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The best way to understand what’s at stake is to take a practical approach of the issue and analyzed how the implementation of the new technology would impact on one of the main challenges in any manufacturing company: the cost of poor quality and downtime.
The true cost of poor quality — the sum of the costs from repair, rework, scrap, service calls, warranty claims and write-offs from obsolete finished goods — can range between 5 and 30% of a manufacturing company’s total revenues, with the range for a majority of companies falling between 10 and 20%.
Likewise, the cost of downtime reduces profitability in a variety of ways too numerous to detail here: lost production and capacity, higher labor cost per unit and inventory costs and added stress on employees and machines. When the machines are down, everyone’s attention is diverted from growing the business, whether it’s responding to new opportunities or innovating new products and services.
IoT devices and cloud computing are designed to address these issues by collecting factory data and provide manufacturers with valuable insights, enabling the identify the causes of poor quality and downtime and take timely decisions.
Industry 4.0 technologies can help manufacturers solve production problems and quickly gain an edge over competitors. Not moving quickly toward these technologies means falling behind your competition and risking future business.
