Alright, if you’ve stayed with us so far, you’ve finally reached the end of this blog series. We’ve spent five articles going over the background, benefits and challenges, components and offerings related to Industry 4.0. You might be thinking, “This is all great, but what’s next?” How does you company move forward with a strategy for Industry 4.0 adoption? We’ll provide some direction for that in this final post by asking some thought-provoking questions. 

Industry 4.0 Adoption 5-Step Plan

In the Digital Operations Signals report referenced in post one of this blog series Microsoft outlines a simple 5-step plan that some businesses use for an Industry 4.0 adoption project:  

• Business case development.  
• Evaluate build/buy/hybrid approach.  
• Proof of concept.  
• Pilot project.  
• Commercial roll-out.  

Industry 4.0 Adoption Framework

Considering a framework can help facilitate discussion, generate buy-in and identify at least some of the key impacts your company may expect to encounter. To further develop your Industry 4.0 adoption approach, consider some of the following high-level questions around adoption of a strategy: 

• What is your target strategy focused on? For example, IoT, AI and machine learning, digital twinning, smart products.  
• How will you measure success? What are your KPIs? For example, operational improvements, increased security, workforce training.  
• Can you identify specific scenarios and use cases you would like to address? 
• How can you scale up/out your strategy?  
• What technologies/architecture do you need to implement to execute the strategy? For example, SaaS, cloud adoption, containerization.  
• How is the integration between information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) working now? Is it efficient? How can you enhance it?  
• What level of automation do you need in any scenario? For example, if you are using real-time monitoring of equipment health, what needs to happen when an issue occurs, or is predicted? 
• What level of cloud adoption can you allow? Do you have requirements that necessitate edge computing or setting up a local cloud instead?  
• What data boundaries exist?  

Hopefully this series has helped prepare you to begin, or continue, your Industry 4.0 adoption path. To see how Improving Winnipeg has helped other customers with their Industry 4.0 adoption in the past, and can help you as well, please contact us. 

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