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The manufacturing industry is at a pivotal point in its history. Driven by competitive pressures to become more agile, innovative, and cost effective, and enabled by advanced digital and analytical technologies, manufacturing companies of all sizes are now pursuing a future vision for their businesses that will transform the rules of competition, how work will be performed, how companies will be organized, and how leadership must lead.

We term this future state: Manufacturing 4.0.

The vision for Manufacturing 4.0 is a state in which production and supply networks are increasingly data-driven, predictive, sustainable, secure, and rapidly reconfigurable to meet changing market demands and competition. Products can be smart, easily customized, autonomous, and provide a rich platform for new service revenue streams. Supply chains are responsive, risk-resilient, traceable, socially responsible, and constantly analyzed in real-time to support faster and more accurate decisions. Enterprises are cross-functional, collaborative, inclusive, and highly integrated, often supported by a digital thread that stretches from design, to deployment, to materials reclamation. And leaders and employees at all levels are digitally-savvy, customer-centric, continually innovative, highly engaged, and ready to adapt to new challenges and grasp new business opportunities.

Underpinning these fundamental changes is the growing importance of data as a critical asset in an M4.0 world – harnessing insights to drive better and more effective decisions. Access to new data-derived insights also provides the foundation for a new era of data entrepreneurship, allowing manufacturing companies and leaders to imagine, develop, and deliver new processes, services, and potentially disruptive business models for the future.

Such a comprehensive and enterprise-wide Manufacturing 4.0 transformation requires a three-dimensional approach in which companies need to identify and master the challenges and opportunities of advanced new technologies and data assets, organizational restructuring and cultural improvement, and new workforce and leadership skills and strategies.

The Manufacturing Leadership Council’s Critical Issues Agenda, therefore, is specifically designed to help manufacturers align their thinking and practices for a successful journey to Manufacturing 4.0.

Production facilities are at the heart of every manufacturing operation, small or large. To create more agile and efficient future factories, manufacturers need to understand the potential of new and evolving production models, materials, and digital technologies to enable their journey to Manufacturing 4.0. The goal is to improve cost efficiencies, speed, quality, productivity, resiliency, and sustainability, and set the stage for identifying transformational new production models for the future.

Areas of Focus

• M4.0 roadmaps, maturity models, and transformation frameworks to help companies of all sizes to move along their journey to Manufacturing 4.0, from current production models, often based on legacy systems, to a future state of increasingly digitally enabled production readiness. Small and medium size manufacturers have specific requirements in this transformational process.
• End-to-end digitization and analysis of manufacturing and engineering processes and functions in both centralized and distributed production networks. Lean is a foundation for digital integration upstream with tiered supply chains, and integration downstream to connect with end customers.
• Deployment of M4.0 visualization, digital twin, simulation, and advanced modeling techniques to help digitize, accelerate, and streamline a more materials-efficient manufacturing design and production process.

Accentuated by the pandemic, the need for more resilient and agile supply chains is now critical as manufacturers strive to better prepare for, and rapidly respond to, multiple types of crises and disruption. Harnessing the speed, connectivity, and analytical capabilities of digitally enabled supply chains helps companies increase visibility, agility, and resiliency across their business-critical supply and partner networks.

Areas of Focus

• Digitally enabled supply chains leveraging M4.0 technologies such as real-time analytics / AI to increase visibility and predictive capabilities to help increase supply network effectiveness and agility, and to respond rapidly to any unexpected crises.
• Collaborative supply chain network strategies and policies supporting the rapid and secure sharing of key data, insights, and future product plans and materials needs among key partners.
• Glocalization of production and supply chains closer to key markets and materials sources to reduce global supply network carbon footprints and minimize potential disruptive impacts.
• An increased focus on digitally supported business continuity planning, crisis management, and organizational preparedness to help manage uncertainty and mitigate the risks of future disruptions.

To fully realize the potential of Manufacturing 4.0, manufacturers of all sizes must transform traditional operational cultures into ones empowered by data, driven by collaboration, and resilient in the face of change. These agile and adaptive M4.0 cultures are essential for organizational flexibility, competitiveness, engagement, and innovation.

Areas of Focus

• Change management strategies for transitioning to a resilient, digital-first organization. Empowering employees in any location with data and building cross-functional processes to enhance performance, improve engagement, and enable rapid decision-making.
• Development of effective internal and external collaboration opportunities through platforms that leverage ideas, resources, and data to create or improve products, enhance processes, and establish successful new business models.
• Best practices for deploying integrated Manufacturing 4.0 technologies and platforms, such as digital threads, that enhance collaboration, engagement, integration, and innovation. Quicker pathways for developing and scaling new ideas and improvements across the enterprise.

In order to create innovative new business models and drive competitiveness, manufacturers must understand how to assess, accelerate adoption, and scale the most promising individual and combined M4.0-enabling technologies to achieve greater speed, agility, efficiency, engagement, and quality to improve their businesses.

Areas of Focus

• Foundational IT & OT hardware, automation, and networking architectures that underpin digital transformation journeys.
• The latest analytical, remote working, and collaborative technologies, such as AI, machine learning, digital twins and threads, 3D printing, robotics, AR/VR, blockchain, 5G networks, and others.
• Longer term horizon technologies with high future potential for manufacturing, such as quantum computing, micro-bots, nanotechnologies, and smart materials.
• Best practice business case approaches for evaluating, selecting, and deploying new value generating M4.0 technologies to enhance business capability, while embracing standards and architectures that support open, interoperable digital ecosystems.

Leaders in the M4.0 era must develop digital acumen to understand the business-changing impact of new technologies, lead a collaborative enterprise empowered by information, and prepare the workforce for the future. This includes identifying new digital roles and skill sets while continuing to attract, develop, retain, and inspire both the current workforce and the next generation.

Areas of Focus

• Leadership skill sets that can best support the journey to Manufacturing 4.0. A successful set of competencies for tomorrow’s manufacturing leaders that is necessary for a data-driven, remote, work-from-anywhere organization.
• New workforce approaches embracing remote working, remote operations, a new focus on health and safety, and the extensive use of collaborative digital platforms both internally and externally.
• Talent development and engagement strategies for a diverse and inclusive multi-generational, multi-cultural, multinational workforce that is increasingly interacting with advanced technologies such as AI and cobots.
• Strategies and sources for creating a skilled talent pipeline and improving employee engagement and retention. Internal methods for identifying top talent and providing a path toward greater visibility and development.

Net Zero carbon free targets now dominate many operational industrial strategies, driven by regulatory compliance, government initiatives, customers, employees, investors, and public media. New analytical insights derived from M4.0 technologies help manufacturers meet their Net Zero targets, increase traceability, manage renewable energy sources, add direct value to the business, and improve transparency around environmental and socially responsible practices.

Areas of Focus

• Transformational digital technologies that will help manufacturers accelerate, manage, and deliver on their aggressive Net Zero carbon footprint targets over the next few years.
• Key M4.0 design technologies to support the intentional design of products for easier reuse, remanufacture, refurbishment, materials reclamation, or recycling at end of life.
• M4.0 production and supply chain strategies that streamline processes to increase efficiency, reduce costs, waste, water usage, and single-use plastic, and ensure all resources, products, components, energy, and materials are kept at their highest utility and value at all times.
• Holistic, sustainable manufacturing business models supported by ethical sourcing and collaborative cross-sector partnerships and deeper community engagement that help create a circular manufacturing economy.

The frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks against industrial targets – from IP theft to ransomware and competitive espionage – are rising alarmingly. The increasingly networked manufacturing ecosystem of machines, people, processes, and external partners, makes manufacturers especially vulnerable and increases the risk of disruption to key manufacturing operations. Cyber protection and defense strategies are now essential in an M4.0 world.

Areas of Focus

• Cybersecurity risk management and mitigation strategies, covering business continuity planning and internal collaboration between OT and IT teams.
• Improved and new digital technologies that provide stronger cyber protection and defence in production facilities, across critical partner networks and ecosystems, and for the increasing numbers of connected smart products.
• The latest developments, guidelines, and best practice advice for manufacturers now becoming available from cyber standards organization and cyber institutes.