The battle between legacy operations and Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is transforming manufacturing operations by leveraging technologies and systems to drive efficiencies and improve productivity. Statista predicts the market will swell from $263 billion in 2021 to $1 trillion by 2028. A recent article posted on the MIT Sloan School of Management website states the surge is based, in part, "because sensor networks are the backbone for creating feedback loops to identify hidden factories, the poorly understood processes and workarounds that drive up production costs and slow systems down."

The article also notes concerns about legacy operations standing in the way of this rapid transformation. Among the challenges cited in the article are:

Lack of standardization: "Too many variations in the old ways of working, which make it difficult to discover the business processes and workflows that will reduce business risk and improve productivity," the article states.

Ghosts of old technology: When new technology is a challenge, employees return to the old system until those methods are phased out.

Insufficient preparation: Investing in technologies without having a strategy for employee training and implementation.

Read the entire article from MIT Sloan School of Management here.