The term “Industry 4.0” was coined more than ten years ago at the Hannover Fair to describe the revolutionary efficiency gains that could be achieved by digitalizing manufacturing operations. Since then, it has become clear that various technological and organization challenges make the digitalization of manufacturing more complex than initially expected.
Despite these challenges, some industries have made significant advances over the past decade – the automotive industry being one of them. To better understand the progress the automotive industry has made in this period, Roland Berger talked to leading global automotive OEMs, Tier-1 suppliers and other industry experts. From these discussions, we derived key learnings such as the clear prioritization of digital manufacturing use cases, the setup of a dedicated cross-functional smart manufacturing team following a hub-and-spoke approach, the definition of a clear IT/OT target landscape and a strong focus on employee training.
By applying these “lessons learned” automotive and non-automotive players can accelerate their journies to “Industry 4.0”.
