The sixth edition of theIndustry 4.0 Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano photographs an Industry 4.0 market in Italy that in 2019 reached a value of €3.9 billion, up 22% on the previous year and almost tripled in four years. 60% of the market is dedicated to connectivity and data acquisition projects(Industrial IoT); the remaining part is divided between Analytics (630 million), Cloud Manufacturing (325 million), Advanced Automation (190 million), Additive Manufacturing (85 million) and advanced human-machine interface technologies (55 million). Consultancy and training activities for Industry 4.0 projects account for a share of around €255 million (+17% compared to 2018).
For 2020, growth was originally expected to be in line with the 2019 trend, i.e. in the order of 20-25%, but the pandemic has complicated the picture: forecasts vary from an optimistic scenario of closing the year almost in line with the initial budget to a pessimistic one of a 5-10% drop in turnover. In the medium to long term, however, the feeling is positive: it is generally agreed that the emergency has accelerated digital transformation.
Investments: IoT and Cloud at the top
40% of companies invested more than 2018 in Industry 4.0 applications. On average, there are now 4.5 per company, with a strong acceleration in particular in Cloud and Analytics solutions for the Supply Chain, as well as IoT for factories. 7% of the companies surveyed have started to implement Artificial Intelligence solutions.
Demonstrating the entrepreneurial reactivity, following the emergency, today almost a third of companies are reconverting their production or are considering doing so (12% and 19% respectively) and for 25% of these, 4.0 technologies such as IoT and the Cloud have been fundamental. "There are a total of 1100 applications of 4.0 technologies in manufacturing companies surveyed by the Observatory and of these as many as 46% respond to needs emphasised by lockdown impositions, " said Giovanni Miragliotta, Director of the Industry 4.0 Observatory. "The emergency will deeply mark Italian companies: about 40% estimate a loss of turnover of more than 20% compared to the budget, but investments in digital were the tool to react to the health emergency and, according to the vast majority of industries, this experience will eventually prove to be an accelerator of the 4.0 transformation."
Certainly, investments are expected to be reduced in the coming months: 26.5% of companies will postpone at least half of their planned investments, and about a quarter will focus on Industrial-IoT, Analytics and Advanced Hmi. Amidst the uncertainty, companies are hoping for incentives to keep the 'digital climb' going, in particular a reduction in taxes for the next few years (33%) and a reduction in labour costs for factory operators (30%).
But a third (31%) also asked for a revival of the Super and Hyper depreciation for capital goods, which is far more desirable than the tax credit for research and development (17%), incentives for intangible assets (18%) or those for recruitment and training (8% and 11%).
New normal: digital will increasingly be needed
Giovanni Miragliotta also identified the five main areas in which digital technology will make a fundamental contribution to enabling businesses to manage the so-called 'new normal': Social Distance Monitoring and Enforcement; Decision Support; Remote Management; Remote Operations; Product and Service Design. " For social distance monitoring, technologies will be fundamental, allowing for operational continuity without having to increase the workforce in production areas, but the same technologies can also enable functions for monitoring the flow of people," explains Miragliotta. "Remote Management will probably have to be developed to manage not only meetings or training activities, but also more complex negotiations and evaluations, just as Remote Operations will evolve, because the virtualisation that affects blue-collar workers involves a series of activities that go beyond remote maintenance. No less complex is the area of Product and Service Design. Miragliotta continues: "Think of the shock to demand: are price lists, catalogues and services created for a given offer still valid in the post-Covid19 era? If they have to be renewed, new prototypes and new suppliers will be needed in a new and increasingly digitalised product or service design process.
Development opportunities: cyber-physical systems
Observing the Italian manufacturing landscape in recent months, it has emerged how digital technologies have gone from being an opportunity to improve efficiency and production performance to becoming an indispensable requirement for business continuity: it is not only a question of adopting Smart Working practices, but also of IoT technologies that make it possible to improve social distancing in the workplace by localising and tracking routes, or to entrust internal logistics to self-driving vehicles.
This opens up vast development opportunities for those very technologies that enable Industry 4.0. Marco Macchi, director of the Industry 4.0 Observatory, emphasised that in such a scenario, digital technologies will make it possible to enhance the ability to monitor, control and make decisions in production and logistics systems. We are in the field of Cyber Physical System, a paradigm according to which traditional machines evolve to communicate, collect, process data and act as a bridge between physical and virtual reality: "At the time of Covid19 the introduction of the Cyber Physical System paradigm is a fundamental opportunity to guarantee the continuity of plant and supply chain operations, overcoming the idea that one must necessarily be on site for certain actions and decisions. It is essential that companies learn to work in a virtual environment in close contact with physical reality, taking into account Digital Twin models for simulation, data analysis algorithms with Artificial Intelligence, and latest-generation human-machine interface technologies".
You might also be interested in:
