Digital challenges of production processes in a company

Abstract

Industry 4.0 will facilitate and simplify communication processes in manufacturing. Digital technologies are gaining ground, from the emergence of cloud computing to Big Data analytics and IoT. The rapid evolution of digital technologies has fundamentally changed the competitive landscape of manufacturing companies, forcing manufacturing companies to digitise and transform their organisations. ERP systems play a key role for SMEs, as this is an area where SMEs have been lagging far behind large companies. At the same time, there are technical and human barriers to the adoption of advanced technologies, the combined effect of which can cause serious disruption to manufacturing processes. In recent years, digitalisation changes have created a number of new opportunities to secure long-term competitive advantages by systematically improving production performance and/or gradually reducing production costs. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the emerging challenges through a concrete company case study.