SUPPLY CHAIN 4.0

A look at how Industry 4.0 concepts are being used to transform supply chain management in the 21st century

- Birender Siwach

As per the recent Fortune Business Insights report, the global Industry 4.0 market is projected to grow from $116.14 billion in 2021 to $337.10 billion in 2028, at a CAGR of 16.4 per cent in the forecast period 2021-2028. This transformation towards Industry 4.0 technologies has also provided the required agility to continue operations in the past few months.

Manufacturers who had adopted Industry 4.0 practices were in a better position to handle COVID-19 induced challenges. As per the McKinsey survey published earlier this year, 56 per cent of respondents that had not implemented Industry 4.0 before COVID-19 found themselves constrained in their ability to respond to the pandemic.

The usage of huge data applications, collaborative robots and automatic transport robots has increased as companies begin to implement Industry 4.0 technologies at their plants. Implementation of Augmented Reality (AR) for remote assistance and problem-solving, AI for facial detection of quality inspectors, Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) for material movement in the workplace and Cobots to undertake repetitive tasks, are slowly becoming a norm.

TRANSFORMING SUPPLY CHAINS

Under the gambit of Industry 4.0, the smart factory is the step towards moving current supply chains to the autonomous supply network. Within modular structured smart factories, cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world, and make decentralised decisions. Over the Internet of Things (IoT), cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with humans in a synchronous manner and time, both internally and externally. Future factories shall see humans and robots working in tandem with each other.