Exploring Our Industrial Heritage: Oklahoma City, OK (Part III)
The Model-T & Industry 4.0 (Part III)
Industry 4.0 sounds amazing – right? So, what are my concerns with it? Well looking back at the dramatic market shifts in the auto industry in 1927 it’s clear manufacturers need to be nimble in order to survive in changing market conditions. If Ford had been able to pivot quickly with his factory tooling, he might have remained at the top much longer with his Model-T. (Learn more - Start from the beginning of this article series).
My experience is that sometimes our manufacturing systems can become like immovable walls or unchangeable tooling. Our entrenched systems can hinder factory flexibility and can slow our speed to market.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
- A privately owned manufacturer of electrical components in the aerospace and defense industry was bought by a large fortune 500 company. After the buy-out, SAP integration was paramount! There was a 6-month implantation plan with the goal to get the ERP systems integrated across the company. But now it has been over three years and SAP is still not implemented.
- A small family-owned CNC business that makes implantable medical devices effectively uses SAP. Really, they do an amazing job taking advantage of all the functionality and capability of their ERP system. However, one day, an ISO auditor decided to fail them on their recertification audit because the SAP software was not validated. Six months of project work and four thick binders later, SAP was validated.
- A very large privately owned company was supplying Amazon with refurbished devices. The margins in this operation were upside-down and the process was moved to another location. Within a few days the new location was in full swing, but efficiencies were flat location to location and so were costs. Refurbishing these devices is a very manual process and the operators were blind as to their performance. As such, IT was tasked with developing a real time performance dashboard and posting results on monitors so the operators could see their performance. Despite the high sense of urgency from the top-down, the dashboard took over 18 months to complete.
I consider these software applications small in scope, however regardless of the simplicity, the lead times can be extreme. I’ve actually never been in a situation whereas my IT requests didn’t compete with hundreds of other IT requests. So, my first concern is the enormous IT requirements that are needed to implement and smoothly maintain Industry 4.0 objectives. The IT resource requirements will be insurmountable for 99.9% of manufacturers. Small and medium sized manufacturers could be leveraged out of business by the large conglomerate manufacturers.
My second concern with Industry 4.0 is that when all of these software systems are integrated together, decoupling them will be nearly impossible. So essentially, once purchased and installed, modifying, changing or unplugging any one component of the massive system will be cost and resource prohibitive.
Lastly, what about being nimble? WHEN (not if) an industry gets turned upside down by new market conditions, is Industry 4.0 going to help or hinder a manufacturer's response time? From my experience with software, hardware and data management transitions, it will hinder market response times. Consider all the complex steps that are required outside of just a simple product or process changes. These steps include resource allocation, project management, software evaluation, hardware evaluation, software validation, hardware validation, data validation, parameter setting, documentation updates and systems training. Is it possible to quickly pivot with all of these required steps?
Looking back at the Model-T, Ford’s inability to quickly respond to changing market conditions cost Ford the lion’s share of the automobile market back in 1928. This inability to respond was directly related to factory tooling the the long lead-times for design and build.
Is Industry 4.0 going to anchor our manufacturing data systems to the floor and prevent manufacturers from quickly responding to changing market conditions? Time may be the judge, but proactive manufacturers will build flex-plans into the structure of these behemoth systems of the future. Technology needs to make us quicker, better and more cost effective. As product life-cycles get shorter, slow speed to market is not an option. Manufacturers of tomorrow need to be even more nimble than manufacturers of the past or they risk losing their market share position.
Did you enjoy this three-part series about our industrial heritage as reflected in OKC? Read about my other industrial explorations: Whiskey Country, The Illinois River Valley and the Introduction to this series of articles.
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