Oracle Industries

Cost savings are important, but the game changer is to fundamentally increase customer lifetime value, whilst improving process efficiency and productivity.

An Oracle-sponsored ”The Manufacturer” study into Industry 4.0 adoption highlighted that 69% of respondents believe that Industry 4.0 is going to have a significant impact on their business.

Vikram Singla, Product Innovation and Supply Chain Leader

The study includes in-depth interviews with decision makers across different business functions, from 250 organisations in the UK. It outlines how UK manufacturers are considering real investment in Industry 4.0 technologies e.g. Internet of Things, Analytics etc. to gain competitive advantage.

Beyond The Hype – Maturing Understanding

The understanding of the Industry 4.0 term, coined about 4 years back, is definitely maturing amongst UK manufacturers (60%). Many manufacturers now realise that they can adopt one or more of the enabling technologies (Internet of Things, Big data and Analytics, Digital modelling etc.) to transform their business. Many (54%) see Industry 4.0 as the 4th manufacturing paradigm after steam/water, the mass production and electronics.

Even more encouraging is the fact that many (27%) manufacturers class themselves as “very aware” of the Industry 4.0 concept.

Manufacturers believe that Industry 4.0 offers significant tangible benefits

The majority of the manufacturers interviewed (69%) see significant impact to their business from Industry 4.0. They see the potential to better segment their customer base and deliver products/services more effectively and efficiently. The impact is seen in the following areas:

• Improved customer service
• End-to-end value chain engineering
• Ability to mass customise
• New business models, e.g. outcome based revenue model based on services called, Servitization
• Increased automation

Early Adopters – The starting points are many

Companies are embarking on their journeys and starting from different points. The report highlights adoption use cases from Oracle customers across sectors - a toy producer; a chemical manufacturer; an architectural masonry manufacturer; a healthcare firm; an end-to-end integrated coffee chain, etc. They are using the Industry 4.0 technologies for smarter products, smarter manufacturing and smarter supply chains.

• Connected Products - The toy manufacturer referred to above is increasing its customer lifetime value by identifying its products’ most used features, split by geography and customer segment. They further develop these features to ensure relevance to their target customer base.
• Connected Demand - An industrial gas producer, not only delivers great service through timely replenishment based on real-time usage data, but also goes the extra mile by alerting the customers if their gas usage is abnormal.
• Connected Manufacturing - A global high-tech manufacturer of semiconductor and display products enhanced its total yield by solving chronic failure problems on the equipment, using data from over 500 thousand sensors and 3.5 billion data points. They were not able to solve the problem through conventional statistical analysis.

Download the complete report here.