project intro

# fourth-industrial-revolution
ABSTRACT
Digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, termed Industry 4.0 has become of strategic importance in a 
highly competitive space. This paper talks about the digital transformation of Volvo Construction Equipment (VCE) 
and how it brought about a seamless physical-digital integration of humans, processes, systems and machines 
across geographies. 
The scope was to have a common blueprint for digitalization of the production flow for 10 VCE plants spread across 
APAC, Europe and Americas. This was a high visibility, high impact initiative and agile methodology was the 
cornerstone of the program. This implementation resulted in huge improvements in the production flow in terms of 
cost, time and visibility. 
The paper highlights the business value the program created for the organisation by leveraging the power of 
Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) integrated with SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (MII). Having a 
robust integrated end-to-end system led to the reduction in the “Manufacturing Execution Systems” maintenance 
cost by more than 50%. One of the key challenges of a Just-in-Time/Just-in-Sequence production line is the dynamic 
nature of the shop-floor layout. This program achieved a shortened lead time for adaptation to shop-floor layout 
changes from 4 weeks to 3 days. Implementation of shop floor visualisation and data analytics led to improved 
operational efficiency.
We were one of the early adopters to implement an integrated Industrial IOT with an ERP system. In addition, a 
holistic approach was taken towards providing value to the Business by developing a Business Continuity Plan for 
all the Volvo CE plants.
INTRODUCTION
In order to be a proactive, lean and cost efficient manufacturing organisation, there are a few key objectives to be 
met, like having the right information available for the shop floor operations at the right time, using automation and 
production equipment integration for swift and smooth data flow, real-time information sharing across plant 
operations such as production, quality, material supply and plant maintenance. The improved visibility and 
traceability of manufacturing process data ensures that right decisions are made resulting in operational efficiency.
These key objectives are formalised into the six design principles of Industry 4.0 which are Interoperability, 
Virtualisation, Decentralisation, Real-Time Capability, Service Orientation and Modularity.
[3]
While the Internet of Things (IOT) had been around for over a decade, large organisations could not exploit its 
potential to a substantial level as it did not address all the six design principles.