From e-commerce to Industry 4.0

The industry is facing a major upheaval and the fastest-thinking companies are well under way.

It’s about switching from old production methods (sorry!) and moving on to data-driven production, where pretty much everything can be measured while it’s happening.

The new way of working provides an overview of all stages of production, across production units, machines, employees and product types.

In addition, data can be used to create a dynamic item flow analysis, so that you can follow individual items all the way from the start of production until it ends.

Imagine how you measured something like that in the old days, that is, five years ago. There would be consultants with stopure on the factory floor. Sampling is very good, but a total overview is much better. What does this have to do with e-commerce?

In 2008, smartphones arrived at the same time as the global financial crisis.

Suddenly, consumers got less money, and if you want to save money, you can make price comparisons on the Internet.

Online, the selection is always greater and prices lower than in stores.

The combination of less money and more sales online brought many stores to their knees. Store chains started to find other ways to sell, closed some stores, opened other stores that were probably smaller, and inventory management was completely restructured.

It was all driven by data, and it still does.

When Amazon has become the Western world’s largest grocery store, it’s because Amazon understands data. They have been driven by data from the very beginning, and they have been adept at dropping “management on gut feeling” and switching to “management based on knowledge”.

This is also the case for today’s factories.

Some continue to work like five years ago. Others see data as an opportunity to become much more skilled, much faster, and they want to win the battle for future production.

Ask yourself: “How many items did we produce yesterday on the third-most efficient machine at the largest factory we have?”

Either you answered three clicks away, or you don’t.