Podcast: Getting started on your digital transformation journey — A back-to-basics guide

Jeff Winter has nearly 20 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, with a focus on automation, safety, controls, and OT and IT systems. Jeff became a thought leader in the fields of Industry 4.0 and digital transformation, and has actively participated in industry associations, academic groups, advisory boards, and industry research teams. He has over 100,000 followers on LinkedIn, and his posts have over 50 million impressions. He currently works with manufacturers big and small to help them embrace Industry 4.0 technologies by translating stats, trends, and benchmarks into actionable strategies.

Jeff has teamed up with Scott Achelpohl, managing editor of Smart Industry, to create (R)Evolutionizing Manufacturing, a monthly series of chats about how industrials of all sizes and budgets can embrace technology. The two experts plan to cover a range of topics, including digital twins, predictive maintenance, cybersecurity, IT and OT convergence, automation, and much more. This episode offers insight into how and where industrials can start their digital transformation journey.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast:

SI: So, Industry 4.0 is an era. When we were prepping for our premiere, Jeff had the idea to talk about where we are in this era in Industry 4.0, how far along are we, and is there any manufacturer left who isn't here participating in this era? Jeff, what do you think? Where are we?

JW: So, it's a hard question to answer because of the lack of standardization on the terms that I just went over. But here's what I can tell you. In 2022, IoT Analytics did a report on Industry 4.0 adoption, and they evaluated adoption and investment across 15 different smart manufacturing use cases and 16 different smart product use cases. Now North America was leading in smart products at 56%, and Asia–Pacific (APAC) was leading in smart manufacturing at 52%. Now this is a percentage of the use cases that companies reported that they are either partially or fully rolled out in each region. So, APAC was also leading in investment for both smart products and smart manufacturing. But if you look across the top use cases, they all vary across all the regions, and this shows you that not everyone is even doing the same thing.

So, another thing to share is the World Economic Forum in 2022 came out with a report analyzing the first 600 SIRI Assessments, or Smart Industry Readiness Index Assessments, and they evaluate three different categories, organization, technology and process, across 16 different dimensions and found that an average score on a scale of zero to five was around a 1.5. And the top 10% were only around a 2.5. And then on top of that, the World Economic Forum also has had their Global Lighthouse Program now for about five years as an attempt to identify the best of the best, the ones that are doing Industry 4.0. There are 153 lighthouses that have been recognized on their last wave, as of December 2023.

So, there are other reports out there that focus on specific technology adoptions, and those often show much higher numbers because adoption of a technology is different than actually transforming a business or realizing the full benefits of industry 4.0. So, no matter how you look at this, we're just getting started in our journey.

SI: Also, on our run into the show today, we deduced that we are at least reasonably far along in Industry 4.0, since there are certain technologies which we say we use less but are so ingrained that they're part of the “manufacturing furniture.” For example, let's take IIoT.

Respondents from industryWeek's annual tech survey reported their companies weren't utilizing IIoT as much. But if you ask them if they are still collecting data from their plant operations and feeding that data into digital systems to drive production decision making, that's IIoT. So, IioT is common enough that it's not even referred to as a standalone technology anymore. Companies use it. They just might not be calling it IIoT.

JW: And that's a great point. And this is where buzzword bingo comes into play. Most of the big buzzwords out there, Industry 4.0, digital transformation, and I would even put AI, IoT, digital twin, as a few that are just really ideas. They're concepts. They aren't a specific technology or product, but often an ecosystem of technologies and products kind of coming together. They all have merit and are all being used, but the terms and ways to describe them change from company to company, application to application, and even have changed over time. So not only that, but emerging technologies eventually, and in some cases very quickly, they become foundational technologies. IoT used to be an emerging technology, but now has become more of a foundational technology. And as an example, using AI in industrial applications highly depends on IoT to be successful, just further validating your point.

About the Podcast
Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast offers news and information for the people who make, store and move things and those who manage and maintain the facilities where that work gets done. Manufacturers from chemical producers to automakers to machine shops can listen for critical insights into the technologies, economic conditions and best practices that can influence how to best run facilities to reach operational excellence.