Recently, Max Lemke, Head of Digital Industry Innovation at the European Commission, made a statement in which he was convinced that Spain is in a good position to take advantage of the digitalization of industry.
But what is industrial digitization? We talk a lot about the fourth industrial revolution, about smart factories, in which all processes are interconnected and provide a huge amount of data that, this time, we will be able to exploit to improve their efficiency and productivity.
We are convinced of this, and that is why we are working on offering intelligent solutions for data management, transforming our traditional business of dimensional checking fixtures into a comprehensive (and digital) service for the capture, analysis and management of the quality control data generated, which has crystallized in kapture.io. That is our goal: to excel in our field of expertise, quality control, within the Industry 4.0 environment.
“Industry 4.0 is an industrial paradigm shift that affects people above all, and where technological tools and process innovation are a means and not an end.
However, when we attend events related to Industry 4.0, we notice that perhaps a lot of emphasis is being placed, and advancing very quickly, on the technological aspect of this revolution, with highly innovative solutions in all fields that allow access to performance that was unthinkable until recently. But …
Yes, we see a but, aren’t we forgetting something? For all this to work, for Industry 4.0 to be viable, we must also get organizations, industrial companies, to evolve and transform. And that implies that it is the people who are part of the industry who must change their traditional vision of the business and initiate the digital transformation. We are talking about a cultural change that will affect us personally in the coming years, and for which we have to prepare ourselves.
Industry 4.0 is not just a matter of process automation, robotization of production, massive data analysis tools, interaction between machines: it is an industrial paradigm shift that affects people above all, and where technological tools and process innovation are a means and not an end.
It is the people who are part of this environment who will define the future of the industry, and this time it is not all about technology. For smart factories to become a reality in the near future, accessible to all sizes of companies, we must take seriously the influence that the human factor has in this revolution, and prepare ourselves to transform the business and work culture. The professions of the future in Industry 4.0 do not yet exist, and we need to prepare ourselves to accept that they will come and change the landscape, and the skills needed to succeed.
And yes, of course technological innovation is key, but without people and without accepting and driving the cultural change that organizations must face, we will be off track.
