Implementing the concept of Industry 4.0 and each of its solutions in an enterprise is an organisational change. Various barriers may appear during the implementation of such a change. This can be remedied by identifying those barriers and taking actions aimed at overcoming the identified obstacles. Prophylactic activities aimed at preventing the occurrence of obstacles are also important, undertaken on the basis of the knowledge of the model of potential barriers.
Implementation of the Industry 4.0 concept means organisational change
Industry 4.0 is a concept assuming changes in three areas: processes, technology and enterprise organisation (in order to increase manufacturing efficiency), introduction of the possibility of flexible assortment changes, virtualisation of organisational resources and making its relations with the environment more flexible.
Within each of these activities it is possible to distinguish detailed solutions for achieving the target state. For example, in the area of technology, solutions including 3D printing, the use of virtual reality or cloud computing may be applied.
Both the implementation of the overall concept of Industry 4.0, and changes in individual areas and implementation of specific technological solutions are organisational changes. Therefore, people responsible for planning and implementing the implementation should approach the challenges ahead armed with change management methodologies and tools.
Change management teams should also be aware that barriers to implementation may occur during the transformation. These barriers may manifest themselves, for example, through a lack of employee involvement in the implementation, reluctance to apply new solutions, and sometimes sabotaging the new way of doing things in order to show that the ‘old’ methods were more effective.
Therefore, it is worthwhile for companies to have tools enabling them to identify and deal with barriers in the way of implementing the whole concept or particular Industry 4.0 solutions in the company.
How to implement?
All barriers on the way to success of changes should be considered together, and it should become a good practice for initiators and leaders of implementation of the concept and solutions of Industry 4.0 to check each time whether the planned activities related to the introduction of change meet each of the conditions for effective implementation from the point of view of a recipient of change (I know, I understand, I want, I can and I do). New Science Agency provides services helping to implement this and other solutions related to the implementation for Industry 4.0 in organisations.
