Industry 4.0

Digitisation: influence on the product

Steve Jobs said: "Only those who are adaptable today can survive". Today, companies no longer put their product at the centre. Their job is to be customer-centric. Customers no longer want to decide between two product variants. They demand more options, more variety, new digital services around the product, the best quality at the best price including service. They have their own ideas on how to buy and use their products. This development has a relevant influence on product structures, processes, and tools.

Digitization: influence on product types

It all began with mechanization and Engineer to Order (ETO) in the 18th century. The degree of standardization in ETO was very low.

It was followed by the use of electrical energy for mass production at the beginning of the 20th century. The Ford Model T was the time of Make to Stock (MTS). The product volume increased, but (almost) no variants were offered.

Another fundamental paradigm shift was brought about by the programmable logic controller (PLC), which accelerated and simplified manufacturing processes. More capacity was freed up for the control of variants. Configurable products were created - Assemble to Order (ATO) - which could be manufactured in one production line.

Customer requirements increased and specific solutions became more important than ever in percentage terms. Today, customers expect a say in the design of the individual product. Every day new solutions, new features, new ideas are created. Today, companies must master these: Make-to-order products (MTO). The aim of the development and manufacturing process is to produce products in batch size 1 under the economic conditions of mass production.

Digitization: influence on product structuring

The number of product variants is increasing enormously, which has a major impact on the product structure. Ideally designed product structures taking into account different product types MTS-ATO-MTO-ETO are the basis for consistency in the flow of information and allow, for example, easy configuration of products. The task of product structuring is to achieve transparency in product data and minimize process costs by means of the continuous information flow achieved.

Many industrial companies are faced with the challenge of strengthening their standards through a cleverly defined internal variety of variants and reducing process costs, especially for exotic products.

The more customer-specific a variant becomes, the higher the process costs can be. As a result, "customer-specific variants" are often calculated too cheaply.

Intelligent product structures and processes enable low process costs despite the diversity of variants. In this way, customer-specific solutions can be returned via standardization in order to keep process costs as low as possible.

Trends der Digitalisierung

• Kunde ins Zentrum stellen/kundenzentriertes Agieren und Kundenbindung erhöhen
• Kundenspezifische Produkte zum Preis von Serienprodukten anbieten
• Kunden möchten ihre Daten einsehen und selbst pflegen

These use cases are becoming increasingly important

• (left: /what-we-do/product data-product structures-product changes text: Consistent product structures target: _blank) - across processes and systems - allow the integration of customer-specific product data and make the entire value-added process more efficient.
• Consistent throughout Change management is a prerequisite for minimizing process costs and keeping data consistent.
• As delivered/As maintained product structure: The documentation of products, equipment and how they are operated is becoming increasingly important. It is the indispensable basis for an integrated service business as well as for the Traceability of IoT data.