Productivity is on the rise in manufacturing, and employment is down. This trend points to a rise in automation, as well as the need for product teams to leverage the latest technology more than ever. There’s no doubt about it: We’re entering a new world of industry.

The upcoming Fourth Industrial Revolution, also called Industry 4.0 is about a future with self-driving cars, 3D printers, and customized automation. This revolution begins when the cyber and physical realms converge in the form of data and analytics from the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), automation, mobility, and the cloud. Project teams who can harness these technologies now will find themselves leading their industries in this coming digital transformation.

The project teams that win in the new world are already positioning themselves to sail through the potential disruptions that these changes will produce.

You can count yourself as a 4.0 team if you are:

• Implementing big data and analytics throughout the current project life cycle
• Building IIoT experience through personal study, work, open source projects or side projects
• Using mobile devices as the primary interface for some of your major systems
• Getting automation to work for you (not as a replacement strategy), enabling teams and organizations to think more strategically
• Moving your software systems to the cloud.

Another way project teams can resist the disruption of the fourth industrial revolution is through security expertise. The dangers of hackers will only rise in the fourth industrial revolution as even more critical systems connect to the internet.

To be successful today and into the future, here are five technology best practices that project teams need to embrace.

1. Get Ready for the Smart Factory

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will give rise to what they call the smart factory. Here, all elements of a plant including machines, products, and virtually the entire environment are networked with each other and connected to the internet.

The smart factory marks some unprecedented changes for the manufacturing project team, such as:

• Flexible production capabilities to respond to changing world markets for your company’s products
• Greater efficiency with building materials and energy
• Greater speed through smarter production processes
• More intelligent logistics through technology solutions that support product manufacturing from the customer sales cycle through final delivery.

IIoT and big data serve as the “smart” in a smart factory. IoT turns manufacturing machinery and the supply chain into intelligent agents that generate data. Analytics tools pull in that big data for self-learning.

Project teams that harness that self-learning can move from being reactionary to becoming visionary because they grasp this technology evolution. The technologies behind the smart factory offer workers improved user experience (UX) not just in application user interfaces but a modern, efficient, ergonomic workplace.

2. Big Data for Everyone

For project teams, data analytics will play a growing role in the fourth industrial revolution. One of the main reasons is that IIoT is enabling firms to capture actionable data from machinery across all their manufacturing facilities.

This means, everybody on the team will have a graphical view into data anytime, anywhere—not just project managers. A picture of machinery health and other related data will always be a few taps away. Three breeds of analytics will start to dictate what your project team maintains on the factory floor:

• Descriptive Analytics using data aggregation and data mining to provide insight into the past and answer: “What has happened?”
• Predictive Analytics using statistical modeling to understand the future and answer: “What could happen?”
• Prescriptive Analytics using optimization and simulation algorithms. The output can offer possible outcomes to operations and maintenance scenarios and answer: “What should we do?

For example, collaboration, project management, and enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions will use analytics for security. Management may consult the analytics for usage trends before negotiating the next license with the platform vendor.

The first project team in a manufacturing organization that harnesses data and analytics is going to have a front seat to the fourth industrial revolution. It’s important for your team to factor analytics and data into your project management strategy and learn to tell data-driven stories about progress (and not see the analytics as intrusive).

Think of the team in the future that wants their employer to purchase new technology to extend their manufacturing platform. The investment makes sense to the technical people on the floor. Executives, however, aren’t such an easy sell because none of them have turned a bolt since they were out of school. The crafty project team can now present compelling data that can enable them to speak to executives like they are a fellow person, not a lower level worker on the manufacturing floor.

3. Get Behind Automation on the Manufacturing Floor

Another outcome of the fourth industrial revolution is going to be automation. Indeed, it’s a sensitive topic across many industries, as automation is going to disrupt project teams. Executives spy cost savings. Employees fear the unemployment line. This clash between employees and management ultimately needs to become a platform where both parties seek out the opportunities and benefits that automation delivers the business and how to cast employees into the future.

Automation speeds up production and delivery because it reduces manual intervention on age-old jobs. To gain the benefits you’re seeking from automation—whether it’s freeing up skilled hands for more important work or reorganizing your staffing structure—you’ll need to consider the following:

• Streamline your current processes or create new ones that account for the savings and other benefits automation brings to your manufacturing floor.
• Implement lean manufacturing practices
• Throw out spreadsheet project management and implement a flexible cloud-based project management tool.

Inevitably, industry watchers and analysts say that automation is going to replace certain types of jobs, which may challenge the bonds of your project team. While automation-proofing your position and your team is difficult if not impossible, the smart and savvy teams facing down the fourth industrial revolution will be the ones developing, implementing, and managing automation solutions lest they might be one of the teams replaced whole or in part by automation.

4. It’s Also the Mobile Devices Revolution

Billions of people already reach for their smartphones and mobile devices first for information, collaboration and business interactions. However, the manufacturing industry is still relatively mobile poor in their technology stack. Industry 4.0 will change that by pushing mobile usage on the manufacturing floor for managers and technicians who need on-demand access to data. No more creating pivot tables in a spreadsheet; instead, think graphical rendering and reporting of data and statistics for machinery across the line.

Other factors like the rise of the citizen developer will also push mobile adoption in the fourth industrial revolution. These developers are digital age business users (not programmers) developing their own business apps using code-free or low code tools and cloud platforms. While manufacturing is seen by some as a mobile device poor industry because of budget and security concerns. Expect Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to be the first step for manufacturing enterprises to use mobile devices every day.

5. Cloud Computing Powers the Smart Factory

With the dominance of IoT, data, and analytics in the fourth industrial revolution means that cloud computing will be the platform of choice because of its flexibility and affordability. While the cloud isn’t new to some industries, manufacturing firms are behind on this trend. The retiring of legacy applications and mobile apps will help push this trend on the manufacturing floor. Forward thinking teams and organizations are already moving to the cloud; going forward, the usage of cloud and application programming interface (API) integration will increase exponentially.

Project teams walking into a smart factory for work can expect the following:

• Cloud-enablement of legacy systems
• Cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• Proactive tools including analytics for scheduling of system maintenance
• DevOps-like alerting for system and machinery failures.

While cloud security remains a concern across industries there have been security advancements by public cloud providers. The hybrid cloud, and the private cloud are lessening such worries for small to mid-sized firms that can’t afford in-house IT security expertise on a full-time basis.

Change Strengthens Project Teams

Change can be disruptive to some types of personalities and management structures. Some pundits and analysts tracking the fourth industrial revolution believe the role of government will become even more important. I say the role and power of the technology project team will become more important because they are the ones doing the work.

Today’s knowledge workers have some recourse for the fourth industrial revolution because they can educate themselves on the technologies powering the fourth generation to better position themselves inside their company.

How is your team preparing for the impending Fourth Industrial Revolution?

In our latest eBook, Are You Ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution?, we take a look at what it means to thrive in Industry 4.0, and what tools are necessary to keep up with new world market demands. We’re going there right along with you!