Industries 4.0: Roadmap for SMEs

The world as we know and experience it today, has been shaped by three major technological  revolutions. Today  we  stand  on  the  cusp  of  a  fourth  industrial revolution;  one  which  promises  to  integrate  the  worlds of  production  and  network  connectivity  in  an  “Inter-net of Things” which makes “INDUSTRIE 4.0” a reality. The term “Future of Manufacturing” (FOM) has frequently been equated with the vision of “Industrie 4.0”.

The potential of technology in manufacturing is certainly very high. It has played a key role in enhancing operations of a manufacturing plant. The automotive industry in India has been one of the quickest industries to have adopted technology. The influx of technology and increasing awareness has paved the way for automation to gain prominence in manufacturing industries. Businesses today are increasingly realizing that with automation they can produce better quality products sustainably and efficiently. The concept of autonomous production will substantially raise the techno-logical complexity of value-adding processes still further in comparison to the situation which exists today. Mastering this degree of complexity calls for suitable software tools to design and construct the relevant plants and systems, and naturally also to operate them. It is urgently necessary that these be developed and launched over the coming years.

Small and medium enterprises are the backbone of industrial development. The  contribution  of  small  scale  industries  (SSIs)  has  been  remarkable  in  the  industrial development of the country. It has a share of 40% in the industrial production. 35% of the total manufactured  exports  of  the  country  are  directly  accounted  for  by  this  sector.  In terms of employment generated, this sector is next only to agriculture employing approximately 36 million people.

INDUSTRIE 4.0 will also result  in  new  ways  of  creating  value  and  novel  business  models.  In particular,it will provide start-ups and small businesses with the opportunity to develop and provide downstream services.  Flexible value chains will transcend departmental, business and company boundaries.  As  a  result,  SMEs  can  become  temporary  production networks  with  precisely  calculated  value  added  contributions. Continuous networking of course presents a challenge for security technology, but INDUSTRIE 4.0 allows client series and personalized products to be produced at unit costs previously only possible in mass production. SMEs often produce highly innovative products for the rest of the world. New market segments will open up for these companies domestically and internationally with INDUSTRIE 4.0. Moreover, SMEs in particular stand to benefit from the standardized networking of their own production resources as many still work with proprietary systems. This will allow SMEs to drastically reduce production management efforts and respond in significantly faster fashion to market requirements.

In another 15-20 years, we can visualize Industrie 4.0, the optimization of production through cyber-physical systems. Future of Manufacturing (FoM) combines the virtual and real world to get a holistic view of the complete value chain. This is done by combining high-performance software with state-of-the-art hardware and digitizing the product development and production. With Siemens’ Digital Enterprise Platform (DEP), the product to be manufactured, ‘smart’ product, has all the necessary information for every step of its production. This is a result of cyber-physical systems. Such a system ensures an optimized organization of networked production facilities, taking into account the entire value chain. Production steps are configured flexibly in response to changing situations. As a result, all process steps- product design, production planning, production engineering, production execution and services- merge to form a whole. This results in higher efficiency, shorter time-to-market and greater adaptability, thus allowing manufacturers to produce efficiently and flexibly while gaining a global competitiveness.

Related stories

Ashish Bhat

Executive Vice President and Head, Digital Factory|Siemens India

According to NASSCOM, the estimated market growth driven by SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) is expected to be 30% (US$1 trillion) by 2020. We expect small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to play a leading role in adoption of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) in India, given the huge opportunity it opens up, not only to grow revenues by increased marketing to new customers, but also to bring in operational efficiency and transform the customer experience. Technological advancement has opened up an opportunity for SMEs to level the playing field and compete with larger players. The need of the hour is for SMEs to take the lead in adopting technology and make it an integral part of their business strategies. Those that are successful in understanding the power of technology and harnessing it across their businesses will lead this new wave of growth.