This is my least favorite term in Industry 4.0.
In Industry 2.0 there was automation. Interlocks could be performed with hard wired electrical relays and field switches. PID loops could be designed with pneumatic bellows and restrictors. In a control room there was a panel with hard wired gauges and illuminated indicators for equipment status and alarms. When Industry 3.0 arrived, its distinguishing attribute was the application of computers to industrial production. What changed in Industry 3.0 is that these analog means of connection and processing were transformed to digital. Computer processors provided the conversion between analog and digital worlds.
Wasn't that "Digital Transformation"?
To argue otherwise would be nonsense. You would have to change the definition of "digital" and "transformation" to suggest that digital transformation did not occur 50 years ago. The English dictionary is not that fungible.
What it is meant to mean in Industry 4.0 is that some of the work processes in industry that are being done manually are being automated. In some cases the work processes are on paper, in many other cases they are in Excel. Excel is a digital spreadsheet, so replacing Excel with an automated work process does not transform it from analog to digital. To call this "Digital Transformation" still makes no sense.
These work processes are primarily performed in a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) above your DCS or SCADA system, and the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) which sits on top of MES. You may already have these systems and be using them, but if it requires manual effort on paper or in Excel you have not been digitally transformed in the Industry 4.0 sense. In Industry 4.0 the objective is to be fully connected so that realtime data is being used to automate these work processes instead of spending money on manual effort using old data.
To enable this digital transformation, Walker Reynolds of Intellic Integration advocates for a unified name space (https://youtu.be/PB_9HIgSCWc). This is a single source (database, tag list) that allows everything to connect to realtime data. This needs to be an open, not proprietary, resource. It does not require a license or key to access. Every resource from the plant floor to ERP uses this name space. Reynolds says this is a requirement for digital transformation because without a unified name space there is a cost to engineer connectivity between everything that prohibits progress. Therefore, a unified name space can be one definition of Industry 4.0 digital transformation.
The August article on "MQTT" that I co-authored with Ian Verhappen is an example of a unified name space technology that is being used today.
Digital Transformation is just a very poor, misleading, and obfuscating term in Industry 4.0. Perhaps better terms to use would be:
•Unified name space transformation
•Enterprise automation transformation
As it stands, it has been so widely used and abused that I do not expect it to disappear. Any attempt to rename it may be quixotic. Perhaps the "Industry 4.0 Lexicon" is the best we can do to deal with it, in which we define it as follows:
•A new customer-driven strategic approach to designing and running a business. All processes are rethought in terms of addressing customer needs and designing products that fits those needs.
•It is not limited to manufacturing or production; accounting may be redesigned to offer more transparent, more automated billing and payments. HR may be rethought to provide a workforce with more customer-focused skills and training.
•Digitization projects are driven by this strategy, either to automate the new processes or provide the data they need to function.
No matter what happens, I expect the term "Digital Transformation" will never be transformed into one that I like.
