The main motivation for companies remains the monitoring and optimization of internal production processes.

© IDC

The International Data Corporation (IDC) presented a study entitled "Digital transformation in the manufacturing industry - from Industry 4.0 vision to reality" at the 3DExperience Forum 2016 in Berlin at the end of October. The study was commissioned by Dassault Systèmes to describe the status quo of Industry 4.0 in Germany and to develop recommendations. To this end, the market research and consulting company IDC surveyed around 200 managers in companies from the manufacturing industry in Germany in August 2016.

The respondents stated that they had significantly more projects in the planning and pilot phase than in 2015 (an increase of 5% and 7% respectively), but were making little progress with implementation. 55% say that too much time is lost due to internal coordination processes. 44% said they were even losing sales because of this. Established structures and a lack of willingness to change often stand in the way of a broad roll-out.

Industry 4.0 is an IT topic

In most companies, the topic is primarily located in the IT department. 81% of managers there deal with Industry 4.0, compared to an average of only 45% in engineering, production or logistics. Only 5% of the industrial companies surveyed currently have a central data platform that links all specialist areas in the value creation process.

70% of the companies surveyed are working on such a standardized database in order to accelerate the exchange of information along the value chain. According to the study, the financial framework conditions are now also being created to implement this goal: While only 23% of factory operators planned financial resources two years ago, today 69% of factory operators already assume that there will also be a budget for Industry 4.0 projects in the coming year.

Production interruptions due to cyber attacks

In addition, almost one in three industrial companies has created a position for these activities in the past 12 months. In addition to the definition of responsible persons or teams, security is one of the key issues. 19% of the industrial companies surveyed have had to interrupt their production in the past 12 months because third parties have tried to access the company's data. Despite these concerns, the number of successful Industry 4.0 use cases is growing: According to the study, one in three industrial companies plans to use wearable devices, augmented and virtual reality in production and engineering over the next three years.