organisation can close this gap by tapping the data they generate not only in commercial transactions but more especially from shop floor as well what’s publicly available will uncover valuable insights to drive profits and growth. The data collect­ed through connected devices in the shop floor can be fruitfully used to:

a) Increase productivity – overall plant efficiency

b) Increase quality – by controlling process parameters and preventing defects

c) Enhance compliance especially in the areas of environment, health and safety

d) Traceability – inventory, online production, genealogy and so on. Calling back only those few hundred parts or vehicle rather than calling back thousands and millions of parts or vehicle, may be the single largest benefit of digitization.

e) Connected vehicles and cus­tomers – to service better, up sale, cross sale

Consider traditional car manufac­turers and Uber, which are both—at the highest level—in the business of moving people around. Car makers meet that need on the floors of fac­tories and showrooms, using a cen­tury of manufacturing experience. Uber meets people’s transportation needs not with steel, glass, rub­ber, and salespeople but with data, matching individual riders and ve­hicles via smart phones. Barely five years into its existence, it is valued at about $50 billion though personally I am of the view that this number is notional at macro level. Uber’s data, algorithms, and enormous growth prospects have already made it more valuable than all of the physical as­sets, intellectual property, and brand names of some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers.

Initiatives of digitisation in man­ufacturing can be classified under three heads:

• Hygiene projects – where the com­pliance, security, sustenance and sim­ilar are taken care of

• Projects for business benefits - Real ROI in terms of increasing produc­tivity and quality

• Strategic projects – where initia­tives like customer connect, trace­ability, connected vehicles will give enduring benefits.

“Many good things can be achieved through digitisation strategy in manufacturing Industry but digitisation for its sake will be a catastrophe”

All said and done, the real cream of digitization in manufacturing is in analysis of data. This like kalei­doscope, will give different insights at different point of time. It may re­define complex process parameters, “provide scientific reasons to the thumb rules established over dec­ades and centuries, automate “design of experiments, prevent defects and provide best customer satisfaction. One of the main challenges of manu­facturing industry today is the age of the employees. The well-established practices, knowledge gained and rules formulated need to be trans­formed to younger generation who are smart but not having patience to wait and learn. If not handled prop­erly, it will result in reinventing the wheel again. Another major hin­drance is the age of the devices and machines, procured over a period decades good enough to give qual­ity output any not enough to get connected. Top management com­mitment to establish a right plan of replacement, change management, drive ROI and adherence is the way for success. One of the best practices in digitization in manufacturing is to digitize critical process where the legacy boat is burnt and all stake­holders are pushed to fight out in the new island of Digital Organiza­tion. Also it’s a great opportunity for IT engineers and CIOs to grease their palms to maintain plant and machineries in the shop-floor. CIOs who were confined to Datacentres in 1990s were rubbing shoulders with commercial CXOs during ERP era, collaborating with marketing man­agers during DMS and CRM period, handshaking with design engineers during PLM now more seen in shop-floor during Industry 4.0.

In summary, many good things can be achieved through digitisation strategy in manufacturing Industry but digitisation for its sake will be a catastrophe. Most of the manag­ers are made as they are taking well informed decisions but all entrepre­neurs are born. Perhaps Industry 5.0 may address this gap and ensure sus­tenance of benefits of Industry 4.0 as the investment is sizeable.