Many Roads, One Destination: The Digitisation of Industry

In a country like South Africa – which in this respect is more follower than leader in this world-wide digital migration – should our industry and manufacturing sector not be ready for Industry 4.0, the end result will be further job losses, as markets and opportunities will be lost to foreign competitors reaping the rewards of these new technologies.

Yet we also have several advantages over more developed economies, such as new communication infrastructures as well as a predominantly young, tech-savvy population that is capable of being early adopters of technology.

So why have industry and the manufacturing sector not been faster to adapt? With the requirements for ‘big data’ produced by CPPSs to be analysed to realise a smart manufacturing environment, there is a fear that establishing, retrieving and processing this data is a very expensive investment.

The truth though is that modern automation systems already comprise Industry 4.0-ready products and technologies; the challenge is to mobilise this data into actionable intelligence platforms, even if this is at an individual process level. By starting small, we can scale companies’ migrations to Industry 4.0 through a journey that matches customers’ capital and operational requirements.

There is also the very real fear that with greater connectivity comes the increased risk of cybersecurity threats. From bad-actor hackers to unintentional human error on the plant floor, security events can have a severe, debilitating impact on network availability, interrupt operations and halt productivity. These fears are well founded, and cybersecurity is an essential consideration of the Industry 4.0 framework, and needs to be built in across the IT/OT environment through a multi-layered, defence-in-depth control approach.

Rockwell Automation understands the evolving industry challenges confronting global manufacturers, because we are one, and have walked this journey for over a decade with our vision and implementation of The Connected Enterprise®.

Like many industrial and manufacturing companies, Rockwell Automation has a diverse product portfolio, with plants with a variety of manufacturing processes spread across the globe producing complicated machines and equipment. Integrating information across IT and control systems, and from the plant floor to the enterprise, has supported our ability to produce made-to-stock, engineered-to-order and configured-to-order solutions faster, more reliably, and with greater consistency.

Together with innovations like the Internet of Things, network convergence, cloud computing, big data and analytics, virtualisation and mobility are resulting in a new inflection point for how manufacturing and industrial organisation and their assets operate.

With a vision and the knowledge of what is required to migrate a global, high-tech network of manufacturing plants and operations to Industry 4.0, Rockwell Automation is helping customers across industries make their digitisation journeys simpler, safer and more cost effective. It’s a journey we make together.