Digital Transformation, an unstoppable reality

Industry 4.0 has filled many pages recently, becoming a common word in the vocabulary of companies from any sector. In fact, its potential for improving productivity is immense. But we must remember that this concept includes dozens of very different technologies, each with different implications and results. The challenge for industrial companies is therefore to know their capabilities in detail and draw up a plan to transform production processes step by step.

Not so long ago we were asking ourselves whether the industry was mature enough to deal with digitization processes. It wasn’t long before the market gave us its response, just like in many other areas, those that were ready were few, the majority found themselves in the middle ground waiting for others to get going to see whether the digitization process is as interesting as suggested or whether it failed to meet expectations, and then there was a third group of "deniers", a term that has become popular over the last few weeks and which includes those that systematically tend to apply the same phase for almost everything: "this isn’t for me".

Until not very long ago, machines were totally dependent on orders from people. They were not autonomous and did not communicate amongst themselves, slowing production and thereby also making them more vulnerable to manual operating errors. Now, in the era of smart & digital factories, MES (manufacturing execution systems) continue to be the backbone that control and oversee everything occurring inside the plant, but they have now moved up a category, revolutionizing management and production.