Industry 4.0 - Why this revolution is different.

If you’ve picked up any business magazine in the last few years, it would have been difficult to miss articles discussing “Industry 4.0”, or the 4th industrial revolution. This new revolution promises Interconnection, Information, Technical assistance and decentralized decision making. But as a business leader, how do you ensure you’re ready in the fight for relevance between you and your competition?

Let’s unpack the principles of Industry 4.0:

• Interconnection - After the somewhat lack-lustre progress of the Internet of Things, how do we reach the point where every machine, device, sensor or process is instrumented and connected to our decision making?
• Information Transparency - How do we empower our entire workforce to make intelligent decisions with the interconnected data streams we’ve built?
• Technical Assistance - How do we augment human tasks and decisions by taking advantage of new innovations and information?
• Decentralized Decision Making - By taking advantage of all of the newly available data sources and transparency, let’s empower machines to begin optimizing processes or procedures and begin exception-driven work in which humans train computers.

So what does this mean to you and your organization?

Whether you fall into manufacturing, financial services, energy, resources or any other vertical - the change in mindset is that Industry 4.0 adoption requires technology to be viewed as a value delivery centre instead of just another cost centre.

EDGE (Value-Driven Digital Transformation) by three ThoughtWorks employees explores a new approach to digital transformation. One that specifically focuses on measuring deliverables based on their actual business value. This very subtle change strives to ask questions of each employee, contractor or consultant to remind them to think "am I delivering actual value in my approach or current strategy?"

At OpsGuru, we know that the value of our services is not measured by the technical experts we employ or the intellectual property that we've created. The value to our customers and partners is how we apply this knowledge to solve their specific business problems to deliver bottom-line value.

Nothing speaks more to this than our approach to foundational cloud build-outs -- the OpsGuru Cloud Launchpad. As a cloud consultancy, we could (like many of our competitors) simply build foundational capabilities on any cloud over and over again. In fact we could very likely create a very successful business doing exactly that. The real question is, where is the value in doing so?

We want the cloud to deliver real business value as quickly as possible. We want to elevate the conversation beyond virtual private clouds or identity and networking; and into data engineering, application modernization or machine learning. This is as value-driven as it gets.

By looking at the current landscape, it’s clear that the majority of these large scale principles of Industry 4.0 require large scale cloud thinking. The days of disconnected silos of business process and information must come to an end to be able to herald in a Transparent and Interconnected Information future.

If you are looking for a value-driven partner to help achieve your business goals, then please reach out to us through [email protected].

About the Author:

Dave Lindon ([email protected])

North American Business Lead

Dave joins OpsGuru from Google Cloud where he led Enterprise Technical Sales in Western Canada. Dave has spent his career building successful business relationships with companies across many verticals. Dave is responsible for OpsGuru’s sales team and has been delivering and selling cloud solutions and professional services for the last 5 years.