Industry 4.0 is the new rage in Manufacturing. However, most  CIOs of manufacturing organizations have not completely realized the potential benefits of digital solutions and technologies that supercharge productivity, RoI.

Beyond the delivery of IT infrastructure and services, the key performance metric for a CIO is an unwavering focus on business outcomes.

Remember, CIOs that foresee and invest in manufacturing transformation using digital solutions are becoming the future CEOs.

The fact that digital transformation services, technologies improve not just productivity, but also overall customer experience is being widely accepted in manufacturing as the efficacy of IT in integrating the entire value chain is understood.

Here are some challenges that Manufacturing CIOs would confront in 2020-21.

Cost-Efficient Operations

Even if the investors and management accept that IT teams are a critical part of driving revenue through the use of innovative technologies, they demand that the organization maintains a tight IT budget, thanks to competitive pressures.

The opportunity for the CIO then is to support more connected selling and agile production engine – through new digital transformation initiatives as well as better use of existing IT systems. It is indeed a tight rope walk.

Data Security

Even as the business is getting all excited about data and analytics, the major challenge for the CIO is securing the data, creating a single source of truth and controlling the access.

SEE ALSO: "Why IT Matters for a Successful Enterprise Digital Transformation"

While data flows from connected products, supply chains, and assets, it is creating a level of complexity that IT organizations have not faced before. How effectively the CIO redesigns their security architecture – with robust threat detection, reliable governance and preventative solutions define the first success for the CIO.

Integration

The obvious next step is to integrate data analytics, end-user systems, and legacy reporting systems to create a unified view.

The existing ERP and Quality Management systems have to be scaled and made flexible and agile to support the new business demand – not just business process efficiency, but insights for informed decision-making.

Quality Monitoring

Even with all the buzz in next-gen technologies improving customer engagement, the real fundamental driver of growth for manufacturing business (or for that matter, any business) is product quality.

The challenge, as well as opportunity for the CIOs in 2019-20, is to invest first in those technologies that help measure and monitor product quality. By digitally enabling the quality control activities through IoT and the supply chains, they can provide greater visibility including track-and-trace capability.

Real-Time Monitoring and Predictive Analytics

Closely connected with the quality imperative are real-time monitoring and predictive analytics. After all, this has been the biggest game-changer that industry 4.0 has unleashed. The challenge for the CIO in 2019-20 is to prioritize the investments in real-time monitoring and go for the implementation in a strategic, road-map driven manner.

Otherwise, the result is the humongous amount of data without the ability to analyze it and without the technical competence to make use of it. The CIO has to play the role of a business adviser to understand which are the production processes that need to be monitored on a real-time basis now and focus only on those as the investment in these programs is huge. For investing in the right technology, partnering with an IoT app development company might help.

Have you started on a digital transformation journey in your industry? If you’re just gearing up to get started with your manufacturing automation, we can help