Design Thinking — A way forward to Manufacturing 4.0 (Industrial Revolution 4.0)

In this incredible dynamic and ever changing time, where uncertainty has become fairly certain. Consumer needs or voice of consumer has gain importance. Consumer preferences are shifting at ever increasing speed, and this is impacting the customers for manufacturing industries directly and indirectly. Ever changing preferences pressure organizations to continuously shorten the lead times and constantly develop new offerings. This means, firms are forced to shift from the reactive to proactive offering or solutions.

Today, what really defies the success is how effectively we pave the path between manufacturing process & response to consumer needs, how effectively we bridge gap how digital application and technology connect with each other to respond to consumer need fast or even before consumer asks for…

Manufacturing industries have already invested heavily over the last several decades to improve their processes and reduce defects to gain overall efficiency, now with 4th revolution or Manufacturing 4.0, it is time to focus on digital adoption, identifying new business models, improve efficiency and meeting customer change. With the advancement of the technology, there is a visible shift from mass production to mass customization. Automation and new product development has great opportunities for the future. In the manufacturing sector, innovation is seen as a fundamental way to ensure productivity growth.

One more major challenges organization faces or one the reason for digita transformation failure is adoption of the new technology by the people. Change is always difficult for people and apparently that is the only formula for the success and relevance as you move towards the future.

In order to have better adoption of the technology, involve the people from the very beginning, address their challenges in the process and co-create the process and technology journey with them. This will bring accountability and sense of being part an important journey of an organization. This shift will help you make them adopt the technology must faster rather then communicating or enforcing the technology post implementation.

Manufacturing industry is influenced by multiple forces that includes, government policies, technology development, productivity expansion and growth, ever changing customer preferences, shift in the global supply chains and internal dynamic changes as well. Creating the right value creating paradigm is essential for the innovation success.

I was recently going through the report, “A Lens in Future” by MLC (Manufacturing Leadership Council) and got some very interesting data points,

84% manufacturer across the globe believes that it is imperative and there will increased pace in digital adoption in the next decade, and it will be game changer by 2030.

Hence, if you haven’t started your journey towards manufacturing 4.0, then now is the time.

58% manufacturer believes in autonomous factory operations by 2030, and of course cost of digitization and bringing autonomy of the processes can be quiet investment intensive and may not be viable for the business.

Almost 75% of manufacturer faces the shortage of skilled workforce and they believe that it will increase with the time, hence digitization becomes most important and automate the operations.

More than 80% of manufacturer are looking for better greater speed and flexibility

Finally, Gartner report says, 89% firms globally firm competing on the basis of customer experience