Options
2016
Conference Paper
Titel
Strategic guidance towards industry 4.0 - a three-stage process model
Abstract
Manufacturing processes have changed significantly since the early days of the steam engine and Henry Ford´s assembly line. After Ford´s mechanization and the first digitaliziation of industrial productions in the 1970s, currently a fourth industrial revolution (commonly referred to as Industry 4.0) is taking place. Industry 4.0 propagates a vision where recent developments in information technology are expected to enable entirely new forms of cooperative engineering and manufacturing. A key idea is that intelligent products an dmachines - driven by real-time data, embedded software and the internet - are organized autonomous agents within a pervasive and agile network of value creation. While realizing the potential of these new concepts today´s manufacturers experience substantial problems in bringing ideas down to the shop floor. Problems occur mainly due to different perceptions about the principal nature of Industry 4.0, the broadness and complexity of related topics, the expected impact on the strategic and operational level and - as an inevitable consequence - the concrete measures needed to transform towards an Industry 4.0 ready company. In this paper we suggest a three-stage process model to systematically guide companies in their Industry 4.0 vision and strategy finding process. The proposed model has been applied and advanced within various real-world projects. results show a strong need for guided support in developing a company-specific Industry 4.0 vision roadmap.