Enabling the Industrial Digital Transformation
In fast-paced business environments, the modern enterprises need to stay competitive. To do so, they continuously aim for optimization of their business processes as well as interactions with other stakeholders. Digitalization, as envisioned by the fourth industrial revolution, poses another challenge that needs to be effective and in a timely fashion mastered.
However, this is easier said than done. The disruptive changes that need to be implemented, in conjunction with the introduction of new technologies, modi operandi, business models, and stakeholder interaction make the whole undertaking a challenging issue. A lot of marketing hype often overestimates the expected benefits and the timeline that they can be achieved. Furthermore, the change management process and its complexities toward adjusting to the new era are for many large companies, and even more for small- and medium-sized enterprises not clear and tangible.
To embrace the benefits of Industrie 4.0 and carry out effectively the necessary digital transformation, the changes need to be understood, well-planned, measured, and successfully executed in a way that fully addresses the complexities underlying in their sociotechnical dimensions. For the technical side, this implies a good understanding of the existing as well as planned technology adoption, in order to design and realize architectures that fully capitalize on the Industrie 4.0 capabilities from the production systems up to enterprise systems level.
In this process, the engineering and the development of tools are expected to play a pivotal role. To have a successful digital transformation, it is indispensable to address the migration paths and strategies for systems, processes, and personnel that utilize them. New tools that enable such efforts to help the enterprise to optimize its resource usage, and adjust its processes for the new infrastructure need to be developed. Coordinating all of these actions in an efficient manner, ultimately empowers modern enterprises to stay competitive enhance their performance.
In this new exciting era, this book touches on several aspects of both architectural as well as engineering nature that need to be tackled in the manufacturing domain. By demonstrating how the PERFoRM framework addresses several of the posed requirements and associated challenges, a clearer path emerges on what actions need to be undertaken and how to carry them out. In addition, the book provides several industrial application examples, for example, from compressors, white goods, electric vehicles, and aerospace, which exemplify how the PERFoRM framework was utilized and make even more clear the hurdles and benefits that can be seized.
Stamatis Karnouskos
SAP
Industrie 4.0 & Digital Supply Chain Innovation
Dietmar Hopp Allee 16
Walldorf, Germany
Stamatis Karnouskos is an expert on the Internet of Things at SAP, Germany. He investigates the added value and impact of emerging technologies in enterprise systems. For over 20 years, he has led efforts in several European Commission and industry-funded projects related to the Internet of Things, Cyber-Physical Systems, Industrie 4.0, manufacturing, smart grids, smart cities, security, and mobility. Stamatis has extensive experience on research and technology management within the industry as well as the European Commission and several national research funding bodies (e.g., in Germany, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Czech Republic, and Greece). He has served on the technical advisory board of Internet Protocol for Smart Objects Alliance (IPSO), and the Permanent Stakeholder Group of the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).