How to digitalize certain industrial activities?

Published on : 29 November 20213 min reading time
Industry is a polysemous term originally covering most human works. It is now about the production of goods through the transformation of raw materials or materials that have already undergone one or more transformations and the exploitation of energy sources. Without a real industrial tradition, and for a large part dependent on “foreigners”, the regional economy is dependent on a few large industrial establishments whose health or economic difficulties determine the regional economic climate. But the question that arises today is “how to digitalize certain industrial activities?

The digital transformation of industry

Industry 4.0 refers to the transformation to digitalize the industrial activity and its companies that are living their fourth industrial revolution. Integrating digital technology into a production plant means numerous and profound transformations of the organization, both in its business activities and in the products and services it offers. With more than 900 billion dollars of investment planned per year between now and 2020, companies in the industry are considering digital transformation as a strategic priority. Industry is therefore at the heart of the digital transformation of companies.

Background on digitalization in the industry

In the industrial sector, companies and in particular their managers have to face an increasingly competitive market, the arrival of innovative technological solutions, the transformation of the commercial relationship and changing consumption patterns. The challenges of digitalization for these industrial companies are to provide more flexibility to produce increasingly efficient and varied products, to increase productivity by shortening delivery times and optimizing manufacturing costs, and to improve profitability by optimizing the time-to-market of their offer.

The digitalization of industrial products

With connected objects, all industrialized products and services are now designed to collect and transmit data (connected car, energy consumption box, …) and thus allow companies to deepen the knowledge of the customer, his appetites, his consumption patterns and consequently to improve the performance of its products and services continuously. This digitalization offers the opportunity to create a real value chain and to develop a co-creation system. There is also the digitalization of customer relations within the industry. Thanks to the digitization of relational cycles, companies have the opportunity to optimize the interaction channels with customers by having and proposing a global and reliable vision from the choice of the offer (choice and personalization of products), during the processing of the order (manufacturing follow-up, delivery follow-up), but also once the product is delivered (transmission of usage data). And this regardless of the distribution channel (BtoB, BtoC, BtoBtoC) and the actors involved (suppliers, partners, resellers, customers).