Column from Intra Logistik
When will digitalization 1.0 finally arrive?
It's all right to drive a pig through the village from time to time, as long as you leave the church inside. One of the bristle animals that has long been panting just beyond the village limits is 4.0. First and foremost, of course, industry, but creative people have also given logistics and intralogistics a 4.0. Why? Because it sounds chic.
4.0 stands for next generation, for networking and digitalization. Bam, the next sow. What is that? When you no longer use your head to add things up, but a calculator instead? And if you have it as an app on your smartphone, is that already 4.0? Or only when you share the result with a community?
4.0 also stands for large halls in which everything happens without people: Logistics, material flow, production, assembly. Only a few supervisors sit behind a pane of glass. What makes the nerd's eyes light up and the businessman's hands rub, scares others. Not just those who earn their living there. But also the entrepreneurs who don't know what to do with "digitalization" and what they might be missing out on. Let's get back to the church, which should stay in the village. We need to stop talking about the infinite possibilities of marketing as soon as possible. Yes, there are companies with the finances, capacities and skills to set up model factories on greenfield sites. But there are not many of them. There are more who take the pragmatic approach and automate transportation between two work steps, interlink tasks and use data for further insights, such as predictive maintenance.
Most small and medium-sized companies would be helped if they were given a clear and pragmatic explanation of how their digitalization can go beyond printed Excel lists, how affordable and easy-to-use software can help employees make fewer mistakes, reduce inventories, find goods faster - or at all - and for which processes this would be useful. I would like to call this support in navigating the jungle Digitization 1.0.
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