EIIL News

~ Collated over the past year, the report contains the findings of four high-level workshops ~

The EIIL today released its Industry 4.0 report, detailing the findings of over a year’s worth of research and high-level workshop events with industry leaders.

This launch ties in with the Global ManuChem Strategies 2017 event in Berlin at which Covestro and Aspentech, two of the major contributors to the report, will be each presenting on topics that were discussed in the EIIL’s workshops.

One of the first highlights from the report is that Industry 4.0 will enable greater supply chain fragmentation, with the necessary trust arising from greater visibility (through shared data) into out-sourced service providers. As profit-centres, these will be driven towards more creativity and innovation.

The report also highlights that the advantages of Industry 4.0 will come only with better collaboration between owners, service providers and solution vendors. But the industry remains too conservative. A new paradigm is needed to encourage investment for innovative Industry 4.0 solutions.

And as supply chains fragment the report highlighted another consideration for today’s leaders. Previewed at the EIIL’s ‘Attracting and Retaining Talent’ working group of its members’ senior HR managers, the report concluded that organisations will find it more difficult to offer in-house all the development roles needed to give young talent the necessary experience for senior leadership roles.
Individuals will need to develop their own entrepreneurial skills, not least effective networking, as they manage frequent changes between employers to build their experience. Meanwhile, employers will need to become adept at keeping an eye on talented individuals as they move around in search of attractive assignments. Greater collaboration between supply chain partners could provide the opportunities to improve the attraction and retention of the best talent.

The full report is available to download from the EIIL resource platform.