Systems Integration in Industry 4.0

1. Requirements Gathering

What does your business hope to gain from undertaking an Industry 4.0 digital transformation? What do your systems do today and what would you like them to do? Do you know what customers expect from you regarding systems and scalability?  Will you be invited to a larger company’s private blockchain to collect data? These are all questions that you and your integrator should explore.

2. Analysis

Given the wants and needs of your company, the analysis stage is where your integrator will offer solutions for your company to consider. Every company is unique to a certain extent and the analysis phase will allow for solutions to be offered that will meet the needs of your business. Smart® Value Streams can help in collecting the information needed to aid in the analysis.

3. System Architecture and Integration Design

Completing the system architecture first will allow for the System Integration design phase to go smoother. The architecture phase is like it sounds, they develop blueprints of the subsystems that will make up your integrated system. Here a plan of integration is architected. Following the blueprint laid out by the system architecture, the Integration phase can begin. This is usually the most time-consuming aspect of an integration project. A digital representation of the architecture is developed and trialed.

4. Implementation

Depending upon how many systems need to be connected, this step can be very time consuming and data integrity and testing is key. Engineers will have to ensure that bugs have been removed so that your company can successfully use the integrated system as desired. Data testing and business process improvement need to be validated. Employee training needs to occur and a “go live” date established.

There are lots of moving parts in a System Integration transformation. Use your experienced project managers and Lean methods such as agile, scrum and process management to aid your success!

As always it is an honor serving you and I hope that you and your company are getting better every day!

Rate and Review Here

More show notes are here

Schedule a free 1/2 call with Tom Reed.

Buy the Lean Game Plan

Follow me on Twitter@dailyleancoach

Join me on Linked In

Scroll to Top