2024 Industry 4.0 Barometer
Published November 20, 2024
- Automotive & Industry
- Industry 4.0 & IoT
Digitalization and Industry 4.0
For this 9th edition, Wavestone, in partnership with France Industrie, La French Fab, and Hub France IA, highlights the growth of the French indusry in terms of technological and organizational maturity.
Digitalization and Industry 4.0 remain essentiel levers for securing industrial performance.
Mastery of Industry 4.0 solutions continues to advance, with 66% of companies now mature on the subject, an increase of 8% compared to 2023. Paradoxically, while nearly a quarter of respondents report a slowdown in the implementation of Industry 4.0 projects, another quarter finds that the current complex economic environment has, on the contrary, accelerated investments in ROI-focused Industry 4.0 projects.
Given this unfavorable economic context, Industry 4.0 projects are subject to stricter selection than in previous years, favoring initiatives that deliver significant returns on investment.
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40% Industry 4.0 projects aim to optimize industrial performance
In most Industry 4.0 use cases I have observed, scalability is the key factor for achieving the estimated ROI in the valuation phase. Moving from Proof of Concept (POC) to Proof of Value (POV) is essential, demonstrating concrete economic value rather than just technical feasibility, as 4.0 technologies are already sufficiently mature.
AI and data management at the heart of current and future challenge
Concerns and initiatives are shifting towards a greater focus on data management: 77% of respondents consider themselves to be mature when it comes to their data management, an increase of 24% since last year.
The main challenge for industrial companies is to ensure process control using artificial intelligence: 81% of industrial companies have sufficient control over their data to be able to exploit it using AI. However, data exploitation projects using generative AI remain anecdotal: only 1% of the industrials questioned have implemented generative AI in their processes.
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80% manufacturers master their connectivity
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77% manufacturers master their data management
The heart of the digital transformation is data and having quality data that can circulate freely within the company so that it can be used in the best possible way. We are realizing in all companies, and even between companies, that this is the basis for exchanging information and taking decisions that will support the whole movement towards re-industrialization, de-carbonization, etc.
CSR: the move to action is accelerating!
CSR issues are being taken more and more actively by industrial companies, 44% of whom have now started to roll out their CSR action plans (up 14% on last year).
This can be seen, on the one hand, in concrete resource management projects, with an 8% increase in the deployment of solutions for monitoring the carbon impact of industries or energy consumption. Secondly, the integration of the human factor and employee satisfaction are becoming decisive factors in the success of deployment (with 13% of respondents placing employee satisfaction at the heart of I4.0 initiatives).
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44% industrials have begun deploying their CSR action plan
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50% large companies have begun deploying their CSR action plans
One important aspect of the digital transition is that it is obviously accelerating the environmental transition that all businesses need to take on. Today, industry is one of the few sectors of the French economy with an extremely ambitious track record. By processing data more finely and having real-time data, digitalization will help to accelerate the environmental transition.