The New York Stock Exchange recently welcomed some top Global manufacturing and financial CIOs in order to have a through provoking discussion on emerging technologies and comparison of processes across industries. The tech talk threw some great insights for the manufacturing industry on how to move forward with Industry4.0.
Recently, the Infrastructure Heads and CIOs of few companies met to have a fluid exchange of thoughts and ideas about emerging technologies in different industries, with a special focus on the comparison of processes followed between manufacturing organizations like WABCO and financial institutions like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The discussion pondered on topics like Design Thinking, DevOps, and Industry 4.0. There were a number of key and enlightening takeaways from the experience.
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“Industry 4.0 requires an accurate choice of technology for immaculate implementation, the tried and tested DevOps model and Design Thinking strategies serve as a perfect tool for the same.”
Milan Kumar
Global Chief Information Officer
WABCO
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The manufacturing industry is home to Industry 4.0 – the hottest trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing-related technologies. Core components of this concept comprise of the Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber-physical Systems, Cloud Computing and Cognitive Computing. To ensure stable implementation of Industry 4.0, sound collaboration and high-end system networking are a must.
On the other hand, DevOps is a suite of practices meant to automate processes between software development and IT teams to ensure more reliable and stable development, built, testing and release of the software. The DevOps model involves the following aspects:
- Absence of Data Silos
- Automation Tools
- Success Measurement Metrics
- Communication-based Corporate Culture
Design thinking comprises of creative strategies meant to develop an understanding of the consumer who will be using the product or service in question and involves phases like Empathizing, Defining, Ideating, Prototyping and Testing.
How do DevOps and Design Thinking help implement Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 necessitates networking the entire industrial value product chain – product design, logistics to the customer. For this, the organizational structure needs to change and important cross-functional processes need stable implementation. Of course, all such processes in the entire value creation chain need to be automated. There exist several tried and tested patterns in IT infrastructure where DevOps models have been successfully implemented.
Using the DevOps model for implementing Industry 4.0 offers:
- Better, crispier collaboration and communication
- Higher employee motivation
- Increased flexibility and agility
- Quantifiable ROI
Design Thinking helps in gaining crucial insights and choosing the right strategies for developing innovative products and services. The objective is to achieve perfect synchronization of technology enablers, customer needs and business models, even during extreme, uncertain conditions.
To Sum Up
Through the extensive discussions and listening to what my fellow CIOs had to say, I was able to gather a better understanding of how manufacturing companies like WABCO should go forward in their implementation of Industry 4.0. Industry 4.0 requires an accurate choice of technology for immaculate implementation. The tried and tested DevOps model and Design Thinking strategies serve as a perfect tool for the same.
