JANUARY 2019 OPINION
Wanted: a new breed
of industrial pioneers
A successful Fourth Industrial Revolution won’t happen organically,
and needs forward-thinking manufacturers to take some bold steps
BY RAFI BILLURCU, PARTNER, MANUFACTURING PRACTICE, INFOSYS CONSULTING
W ho remembers Alan Shepard?
If you’re not familiar with the
name, that’s probably because
he was the second man to go
into space. It doesn’t matter that Shepard
displayed the same courage and skill as his
Soviet counterpart Yuri Gagarin. People
only remember the pioneers – Christopher
Columbus, Edmund Hillary, the Wright
Brothers – not those who followed in their
footsteps. It’s the same for manufacturers
as it is for explorers: being the fi rst to bring
a new product to market gives a company
a cachet that catapults it far ahead of its
rivals, and forever associates that brand with
innovation and ambition.
There are many factors that can cause
fatal delays in the race to be fi rst: legal
compliance, problems in the supply chain,
unexpected complications in the test and
development stage. However, by utilising
technologies such as IOT, 3D printing and
AI eff ectively, manufacturing companies can
reduce the time to market signifi cantly and
gain competitive advantage.
Before delving into this further, we need
to remind ourselves of the transformational
changes that manufacturing has undergone
in the last few years.
The advent of Industry 4.0 has disrupted
long-established business and organisational
models, and placed IT at the heart of product
and go-to-market strategy. There are two
major trends underlying this transformation:
fi rst, the move away from mass production
to mass customisation/personalisation,
where consumers can design their own
unique products and bundled services. The
second is the fact that products themselves
are changing, and now have a range of
technologies embedded deep within them.
Not long ago, a car was a car. Now it’s
a four-wheeled communications device.
Technology is not just a fundamental
component of vehicles today; it’s also
enabling manufacturers to create new
business models based on that ugly
neologism, ‘servitisation’. Examples of these
value-added services include provision of
a car as a service that may include weekly
fuel top-ups based on geo-location and car
mileage, on-board entertainment with live
streaming and usage-based insurance.
It’s not just embedded technology that is
changing long-entrenched business models:
other technologies such as 3D printing can
open up even more services and revenue
opportunities. Think of a washing machine
where the manufacturer can remotely detect
when a component is on the verge of failure,
print a replacement, and ship it directly to a
local dealership or plumber for installation
– all before the user is aware that there’s a
problem with their machine.
The revenue opportunities of Industry
4.0 are almost limitless, yet we’re, for the
most part, still at the conceptual stage. The
manufacturer that brings these new business
models to market fi rst will not only achieve a
crucial lead over their competitors; they will
establish the brand as visionary innovators in
the minds of consumers. So valuable is this
perception, it’s impossible to put a price on it.
We now come to the challenge facing
manufacturers in bringing new business
models to market: we have barely reached
the ‘pioneer’ stage of Industry 4.0. To
make that great leap into the unknown,
manufacturers will have to reinvent the rules
as they progress through this journey.
This need to reduce time to market and
reshape core product off erings to include
IT components requires the partnership
between business and IT to be stronger
than ever before. Traditionally, technology
provided the underlying infrastructure that
enabled project design and delivery; today
it is part of the product being sold.
Manufacturers cannot just hope that
this transition happens organically. Instead,
management must fi nd a better way for the
operating model between businesses and
IT departments to co-opt their leaders into
an aligned product strategy and strike the
right balance between risk and reward.
Alternatively, businesses may be given
more autonomy and funding to develop
innovative systems, enabling them to
develop products faster and reducing time
to market, which could see a small part
of the IT department dissolving into the
business functions to support the product
development. However, in such a model, the
governance and rules of engagement have to
be defi ned in partnership with IT to ensure
a smooth execution and alignment with the
overall IT strategy.
Are you an Industry 4.0 ‘pioneer’? Are you reaping the rewards of investing in technology?
We want to hear from you. Email: chris.beck@markallengroup.com
www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk 11
Brian Jackson /stock.adobe.com
Manufacturers will have
to reinvent the rulesÓ
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