Ever since the Industrial Revolution, the face of machines, trade, technology and production has changed and evolved drastically. In the beginning, there were steam powered machines, then came electrically run mass production assembly lines which were followed by computer automated machines. Once again there has been a transformation with Industry 4.0, which has taken industries from the present hybrid state to a true digital enterprise. This has opened two thoughts, what is the present state? And what is a true digital enterprise?
When computers first came into existence, the design industry got a big lift with manual engineering drawing drafts being automated to get CAD (Computer Aided Drafting). Powered by Moor’s Law, which predicted the growth of the technological revolution, it has brought many reforms in the manufacturing process to include CADD (Computer Aided Designing and Drafting) and CAE (Computer Aided Engineering). We then saw CIM (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) enterprises, which had their technical drawings converted into solid models. This was done using parametric software with the power to design involving material properties, volume properties and simulation which came to be called digitally mature industrial enterprise.
When Manufacturing Post MRP I (material requirements planning) and MRP II and MRP III (manufacturing resource planning), the industry embraced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to optimise resources to maximise efficacies and profit by including Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Finance. ERP stopped at Source Code Management (SCM) and CRM never included design data beyond BOM (Bill of Materials).
With no Design – Bill of Materials (BOM) - Source Code Management (SCM) integration, the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) was not able to deliver the real value to the enterprise. This gap was filled by the PLM (Product Life Cycle) platforms which heralded the road to hybrid digital industrial enterprises. Computer power further developed beyond Moor’s law and we came to realise the exponential power it has along with economic viability. This sensing became the main stream for data gathering and is pushing the potential to go beyond optimisation to analytics driven agile manufacturing. This has brought new optimism in every industry that loved or hated ERP! This is the power of BIG Data analytics which opens a Pandora’s box of possibilities into system optimisation. This can only be better with rapid communications across a 5G network. This state of an agile super optimum enterprise is called the true Digital Enterprise.
A true digital enterprise will deliver value through physical products or services at the core, through a network of customers and suppliers augmented by digital interfaces and data driven industrial digital ecosystems. These developments will profoundly change individual enterprise, as well as transform market dynamics across the globe. This is the transformation state of art is Industry 4.0.
