Industry 4.0 Academy

Baselines

The digitalisation and automation of processes in the manufacturing sector is a necessity which companies must implement effectively in order to stay competitive in the changed market conditions and, most of all, to keep and improve their market position and be successfully included in global value chains. Maintaining or improving market position and keeping the role as suppliers or manufacturers, thereby winning contracts in the international environment in the long run is the main challenge currently faced by companies.

With the transition to a digital society facilitated by a strong advancement of ICT, the evolution of lean manufacturing based business process has become so pronounced that it stands as a great challenge to many traditional manufacturing (and service) companies which they must tackle in order to be able to operate under the changed competitive conditions. Companies require know-how to develop their own services and products in a way that enables them to be competitive by observing the environmental policy and ensuring proper working conditions.

Only the companies that will respond to the external events by properly optimising their internal processes and offer products and services of even higher quality in the context of the available sources will be rewarded with a higher added value and loyalty of their workers and consumers. Such flexibility which in a way reminds of an autopoietic (self-steered) organism is not possible without interconnected and IT-supported processes and their steering based on objective facts. This is where process digitalisation and automation prove themselves as the key supplements to management’s decisions in real time, as an irreplaceable support to employees in efficient process and business idea realisation and increasingly also as a realisable answer to human resource shortage.

Purpose

With our training programme - Industry 4.0 Academy we offer manufacturing companies a possibility to acquire the know-how needed by industry workers; we do this by training experts in companies for independent and efficient project management in the field of digitalisation and automation of product processes.

The key goals delivered by integration to employees and the industry are:

• enhancing digital competence of employees,
• transferring practical know-how,
• helping manufacturing companies in technological development for digital transformation with the purpose to boost effectiveness, productivity and competitiveness.

Goals

With the expert support and training programme Industry 4.0 Academy the participants obtain a more comprehensive knowledge to understand the concepts of Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 and practical knowledge for independent management of internal digital process transformation projects to support successful operating results in the long run.

The key goals are:

• training for the implementation and management of manufacturing process digitalization and automation projects,
• self-evaluation and preparation of a plan of the activities necessary for development,
• expert support and mentoring,
• knowledge and experience sharing between participants and organizations,
• knowledge transfer between and integration of different manufacturing industries (car industry, large household appliances, and the like).

Programme

1. The basic concepts of Industry 4.0

• What do we understand under Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0?
• Key principles
• Advantages of Industry 4.0
• Industry 4.0 and impact on the business model and management system
• Human-robot cooperation – employee dehumanization or work humanization?
• Presentation of the Industry 4.0 maturity model (gap analysis)

2. Task

• Self-evaluation of the current situation in the participant’s company.

3. Industry 4.0 transformation phases

• Transformation starts with the management
• Digital strategy and transformation performance indicators
• Digital business models, products and services, inclusion into the digital value chain
• Development of digital culture, digital HR, and digital workplaces (change management in company transformation)
• Digitalization of realization processes
• Industry 4.0 and digital risk management

4. Industry 4.0 methods and tools

• Virtual-real world
• Industrial Internet of Things
• Supervision, analysis and advanced process management in real time
• Modern technologies of process and quality parameter supervision
• Automation and robotisation – a vision of automated and robotised processes, basic guidelines
• An example of company transformation schedule

5. Project task

• Preparation of a short action plan for company transformation to the desired level.

6. Project task preparation and presentation

Based on preliminary instructions and guided by a mentor, a brief project task is prepared on the selected topic or a transformation action plan. The goal of project task or action plan is to add value to a company in the form of a solution to an individual problem/challenge of such organization.

7. Presentation of transformation project tasks or action plans and exchange of best practices

The content can be customized and performed at the desired time or place.

Additional information: Tanja Benček, phone: +386 (1) 5609 594, e-mail: tanja.bencek@siq.si