The acronym VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity - has become more prevalent than ever in our everyday lives. The coronavirus pandemic is acting like a magnifying glass on companies' ability to navigate this VUCA world - including in the manufacturing industry. Demand has changed dramatically overnight and supply chains need to be reorganized in some cases. A large number of products are suddenly in demand in much higher quantities. What counts here is simply the ability to scale up your own supply chain accordingly.

We see every day that digitalization is making a significant contribution here. Retailers who also operate an online store have a decisive competitive advantage. And the online store that offers a reliable availability display for each individual item is once again one step ahead.

Flexibility takes center stage
Flexibility has been an issue in production for many years, driven by increasingly specific customer demand. As there are a number of suppliers in many markets that somehow differentiate themselves from one another

customized production has long since become the standard for some. In the old paradigm of assembly line production, optimizing resources was the recipe for success. In the early days of Industry 3.0, the principle was to achieve the highest possible level of automation and, in combination with this, the highest possible output of the same item, which reduced complexity costs.

There are many signs in factories today that flexibility is at the forefront. Many factories now rely on production islands instead of assembly line production, where highly trained skilled workers carry out all assembly, testing and packaging work on a product. Instead of a narrowly defined product range, many different products can be manufactured, as humans are still far superior to machines when it comes to mastering complexity. The material is supplied on demand by AGVs or by the employees themselves.

However, the dissolution of fixed links must remain transparent in order to enable the management of these loose structures. A broad database is the basis of a modern production management system that enables real-time control of production. This is where the difference between previous concepts and Industry 4.0 becomes clear. While automation is about the repeated execution of certain work steps in a consistent and defined quality, digitalization means reacting to undefined situations for which there is no standardized procedure. For example, when demand suddenly explodes and new ways of dealing with it have to be found.

Access to all information
From a communication architecture perspective, the role of the classic automation pyramid is changing here. The term "automation pyramid" refers to a hierarchy of field devices, controllers, visualization and control system. All of these components also exist in Industry 4.0, but their communication relationships are changing fundamentally. In the classic model, for example, all sensors were connected exclusively to controllers, which transmitted certain result values from the measured values to the next higher layer, for example the visualization level, based on the programmed processing logic. In digitalized production, however, direct communication relationships are required between all levels and segments. So instead of just sending a workpiece number recorded by an RFID reader to the control system, the data record must now also be transmitted to the factory IT system - for example, in order to develop possible optimizations in the production flow.