The expression industry 4.0 was coined for the first time at the Hannover Fair in 2011 and is, today, a current expression to indicate the company evolution aimed at the digitization and automation of production systems.
Company 4.0, also known as Enterprise 4.0, is its natural evolution. In fact, optimization has not stopped at production processes but has expanded into managerial and strategic areas to ensure better control of information and ensure a substantial competitive advantage.
Enterprise 4.0, what is it?
Digital innovation for the company
The optimization of the organization has led companies, from SMEs to large companies, to increasingly integrate digital technologies, IoT and Artificial Intelligence in an ever more complete way. In fact, the goal is to improve the productivity and competitiveness of the company, not only at the production level, but also at the managerial, strategic and organizational level.
The benefit sought, therefore, is not limited to saving time, reducing management costs or simply improving the monitoring of economic flows. The real goal is to create a transparency of processes such as to allow managers and owners to fully exploit company resources to seize opportunities and develop their business.
The company 4.0, processes and innovation
Enterprise 4.0 is based on cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing and big data analytics, which are used to automate and digitize the entire production cycle, from acquisition of raw materials to the delivery of the finished product.
These technologies are used to:
- The management of human resources
- Marketing and internal communication
- The estimation and configuration processes
- Order acquisition
- Process monitoring from raw material acquisition to post-sales
- Document management
Thanks to the digitization of processes, the 4.0 company aims to monitor all company activities in real time and have total control over the information. This allows you to make quick and informed decisions, to anticipate customer needs by improving the quality of your products and services and optimizing the consumption of resources in order to be able to concentrate your energies on activities that are crucial for the growth and increase of the business.
The 4.0 company certainly represents a great opportunity, however, to successfully adopt this transformation, it is necessary to proactively involve all company resources who will take part in the change by proposing solutions for the improvement and structuring of enabling technologies, concretely useful and for them support.
“The philosophy behind the innovation process 4.0 is to simplify and automate all those operations that require a dispersion of resources and which could be redirected towards more strategic operations”
Digital innovation, how to harness the power of information and facilitation
Among the areas most addressed in this transition phase, which has been underway for some time now, are:
- Sales processes: Creation of estimates, product configuration, management of the sales network, communication with the customer, and automation in the management of the order flow.
- Accessory management processes: document management, product dossier management, customer documentation, collection of certifications, etc.
- Order/production flow management processes: Parallel monitoring of the administrative and production flow of raw materials, orders and inventory.
The hot topic 2023: sales processes through integrated B2B configurators and estimators
As regards the creation of estimates, the 4.0 company makes use of integrated management software. These allow you to automate the cost calculation process and provide the sales network or customer with accurate, timely estimates based on a specific configuration.
A process that is always onerous and rarely optimized: document management
Document management is the other crucial aspect for enterprise 4.0. Thanks to digitization, documents are stored in a secure and accessible way from any device, eliminating the need for physical storage spaces, simplifying information management and reducing the use of paper. Furthermore, digitization makes it possible to automate document management and sharing processes, estimating an average saving of around 38 minutes per day per person.
Production flow and productivity
Finally, the parallel view of the order/production flow allows you to monitor production in real time, providing a complete overview of the processes, their progress and cost-efficiency. Thanks to digitization, the 4.0 company is able to visualize the entire production flow from the order phase to after-sales, allowing to identify any problems and to intervene promptly to make a strategic improvement.
Conclusion
The achievement of these objectives represents an indispensable opportunity for every entrepreneur to increase the profitability of their business. Enterprise 4.0 represents a natural evolution of industry 4.0, which goes beyond the digitization of production processes to also include strategic information management. The adoption of advanced technologies improves the company’s productivity, competitiveness and environmental impact, but it also requires a cultural change within the organization.
