The overall drive to converge IT networks with OT networks is the valuable insights extracted to improve safety, uptime, maintenance, regulatory and compliance, analytics, and performance. Together, these components help to drive a business’s competitive position in its marketplace. If this sounds a lot like Industry 4.0, you would not be wrong.
As defined, Industry 4.0 is akin to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where traditional industrial and manufacturing practices are being upgraded to include smart processes being completed by smarter devices. These devices are emboldened to make process decisions that allow for improved metrics such as:
• Manufacturing processes
• Improved uptime
• Timely maintenance
• Data-driven analytics, and ultimately,
• Competitive business positioning
But more importantly, this convergence allows for big data to be shared across the entire enterprise where it can be used to streamline an entire supply chain, improve workers safety and reduce accidents on the manufacturing floor, and allow for traditionally IT-based ERP, CRM, and other IT platform to lend value to what was once a segmented portion of the enterprise.