Management of Industry 4.0 - Challenges and areas of activities for the successful management of companies
Dr.-Ing. Ulrike Beissert
Fraunhofer IML, Germany
Everybody is talking about Industry 4.0. - but what does it really mean?
In short: Everything is linked, everything is autonomous. It is about the Internet of Things and Internet of Services.
The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0.), at the beginning of which we are today, has been pushed further by the turbulent technological development. Facing the prevailing inflationary use of the term, we should consider: What job enthusiasts vaguely call "Revolution" is for companies rather a fast evolution. Because at the moment the technology is developing faster than the management. Within this circumstance lies the main challenge of this revolution is to make management as fast as technology.
The following issues relate to challenges and areas of activities for the successful management of companies and will be discussed in the course:
- Fitness program for the company
A challenging task to implement Industry 4.0. is not only to make the production fit, for example with the implementation of cyber-physical systems, but the most important thing is the organization and management of implementation of Industry 4.0.
Through Social Networks and Social Media, we share a huge amount of information in real-time, which was uncommon before. This is the perfect analogy to the Smart Factory of Industry 4.0, in which everything is linked. The main challenges of the management 4.0 is to properly organize exchange of unlimited information and technical data, e.g. from different machines, systems, etc. as well as communication of different functions in the company.
If the management does not do their job, many opportunities of Industry 4.0 will be wasted. In order to achieve the transformation of the organizations, some tools like the Change Management should be implemented.
- Reserved Small-Medium Enterprises
Until now the Small-medium enterprises (SMEs) react rather carefully or reserved concerning Industry 4.0. Germany as a country where its economy highly depends on the SMEs and their engagements within the Industry 4.0. will be necessary for strengthen of the economy. Research and Identification on which area of Industry 4.0 fits best to each type of SMEs should be performed both by scientists and practitioners.
Industry 4.0 is strongly based on Big Data. New business opportunities quickly develop from the previously unknown big amount of data. With the implementation of these new business opportunities, different functions are emerged and changed accordingly. New management system is therefore needed.
Another important discussion topic of Industry 4.0 is the measuring and control models: „You can’t manage what you can’t measure“. What will be the costs of implementation of Industry 4.0 for my company? What would be the benefits for my company? Only by answering these questions, we can make reasonable decision.
Short profile
Dr.-Ing. Ulrike Beissert studied civil engineering at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and continued a subsequent doctorate at the faculty of "Baubetrieb und Bauverfahren". Her topic was "Constraint-based simulation for scheduling of execution processes". Since 2011 she has been a research assistant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML, Supply Chain Engineering and since 2015 Head of the Supply Chain Design group. In addition, she is responsible for the research coordination in the department. In recent years, she has been involved in various projects (industry / R & D), mainly in the automotive sector. The topics were broadly diversified from process optimization, technology assessment, energy efficiency considerations, trainings and concepts of man-machine interfaces in under the aspect of new concepts of planning tools. Additionally, she is also working in fields of steel industry and trade.
