Industry 4.0 as well as predictive or preventive maintenance are hot topics in today’s industrial sector. Most companies we talk with face an ever-stiffening competition on their physical core products: Competitors, often from abroad, are increasingly catching up in terms of quality and start competing with high-end physical products. This development is not new, but it seems to be ever accelerating. 

For many years, the typical answer to the challenge was moving further up the value chain by offering fully integrated services instead of stand-alone products ("solution provider"). But also here competition is becoming intense. Instead, the intelligence of a product has become the most decisive factor to differentiate it from lower tier competitors: For example, does the product automatically provide a warning before it is at risk of breaking - so major damage, unplanned shutdowns and production loss can be avoided? It is capabilities like these, based on smart sensors and AI-driven analytics, which provide substantial competitive advantages today.

While there is a wide consensus about the increasing value of intelligent digital solutions, we nevertheless see few concrete  applications in the market that add real customer value. In our experience, many companies approach artificial intelligence and advanced analytics from the wrong angle. They ask: “What data do we have and what could we make out of it?”. However, the starting point for any kind of data collection should always be focussed on a tangible customer need instead. Find out more how we approach our projects: