Experts: Road to Manufacturing 4.0 Goes Through Cloud

In charting a course for what is described as the fourth industrial revolution in the auto industry, the objectives aren’t much different than those of the time-and-motion studies used more than a century ago: more efficiency and greater productivity.

Brian Irwin, managing director-automotive and mobility practice at Accenture, says the fourth industrial revolution uses the cloud and analytics to drive it.

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The information can be used for predictive maintenance as the data can tell when a part or machine needs to be replaced even before it fails, Irwin says. The data also can be used to improve quality control and move it further upstream in the production process to eliminate the need for re-work at the end of the line, he says.

The fourth industrial revolution is getting under way slowly because of what Irwin calls pilot paralysis: The technology appeals to the “geeks” in the organization, but they often find it difficult to build a business case to support the investment required.

The trick is convincing skeptics on the financial side that the necessary investment will pay a dividend, according to Darren Coil (below, bottom right), Microsoft director-strategic business development. “It’s hard to get finance to pull the trigger,” he says.

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Fragmented leadership also hurts, and organizations need to have a human resources strategy that protects workers. If employees believe they will be out of a job once a new system is up and running, the implementation is bound to fail, Irwin says.

Microsoft, however, has its own proof point in boosting the profits from its Xbox factory $400 million with help from digitization, Coil says.

The combination of big data, the cloud, machine learning and artificial intelligence can more accurately forecast consumer demand by adding sales data and real-time information from dealers into the mix, he says. The systems also can improve logistics by sharing more data with suppliers, who can adjust their production and deliveries accordingly, Coil says.

Coil cautions there is no system or single piece of software that can evaluate the stream of data in real time and adjust production, a process likely to include machines and software from a variety of vendors.

Michael Ger, managing director-manufacturing and automotive industries for Cloudera, says the momentum behind the fourth industrial revolution is growing with advances in artificial intelligence. The price of sensors has dropped by two-thirds over the past decade, enabling the collection of more and more data.

“Once you have collected the data, you can leverage it with machine learning,” he says.