Industry 4.0: Building the Foundations of a Sustainable Organization

With the growing global environmental crisis, organizations are moving towards sustainable operations. Niall Sullivan, global marketing manager at Senseye, looks at how industry 4.0 can help to reduce your environmental impact.

With some 70% of the world’s economy now committed to reaching zero net carbon emissions, the pressure is on all of us to reduce our environmental impact. While the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) is bringing together world leaders and other interested parties to address the global environmental crisis, a great deal of the responsibility will, of course, fall on businesses. Organizations will inevitably be tasked with meeting ever-stricter environmental targets, with significant efforts required to ensure waste, energy and water reduction is the order of the day.

More businesses are moving to more sustainable operations already, in part due to a need to offset risks and costs, as all well as reacting to pressure from stakeholders and customers. Not only can reducing a business’s environmental impact achieve sustainability aims, enhancing regulatory compliance, fulfilling corporate social responsibilities, and boosting competitive advantage when it comes to green credentials, it can also prove to be a more efficient way of working. Improvements in operational efficiency can mean reduced costs and less waste, as well as enhanced environmental performance transparency, an attribute that is becoming increasingly in demand from other supply chain partners. 

The Industry 4.0 Effect

In an effort to meet national, regional and global standards, as well as fulfilling the expectations of supply chain partners, customers and stakeholders alike, businesses are looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact further still. It’s here that industry 4.0 can play a key role, bringing together the often complex and interconnected processes and assets that lie at the heart of so many businesses, improving resource usage, energy efficiency and waste reduction.

At the heart of industry 4.0 lies the connection of existing assets, resources and skills through the use of technology, enabling the real-time monitoring of asset performance to ensure optimum efficiency at all times. This in itself is a major boost to environmental efforts, with the real-time monitoring of asset performance ensuring assets are operating at optimum efficiency. With this comes more targeted, more effective resource and asset management and maintenance, reducing energy use and waste levels. Ultimately, businesses should be focussing on how to make the most of their assets to harness the possibilities that industry 4.0 has to offer when it comes to reducing environmental impact.

What’s standing in the way of some businesses fully embracing the notion of industry 4.0 is the misconception that it needs root-and-branch transformation, with costly, large-scale digital investment required. Given the events of the last 18 months, at the moment, it’s safe to say that many businesses aren’t in a position to pursue such vast projects, even if they wanted to. In reality, small changes and the targeted application of the right technology can help businesses to reap the environmental benefits that industry 4.0 has to offer.

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Data Into Insight

It doesn’t have to be all sensor-based, another misconception that can stand in the way of more businesses embracing industry 4.0. While the sensor approach might be the right fit for some businesses, it certainly isn’t the case for all. What businesses must concentrate on is capturing data from multiple sources how best they can be that through a combination of data indicators, such as temperature readings, energy consumption and vibration levels, for example, and then making sense of this data. This is where sensor-agnostic, closed-loop systems are vital, with in-built machine learning capabilities turning this hard data into actionable insight. It’s these cloud-based systems, delivering advanced predictive analytics that can underpin business sustainability, driving a targeted environmental strategy across the organization. 

Analytics platforms can highlight patterns, trends and anomalies which can signal inefficient asset performance. These can then be investigated, with any issues addressed ahead of time to ensure optimum efficiency. This ability to readily identify where the inefficiencies lie can prove crucial for reducing a business’s environmental impact, facilitating a comprehensive picture of asset and resource performance at any moment in time. 

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A Proactive Approach

Having access to such insight enables businesses to put in place predictive and preventative maintenance strategies too, another core component in reducing an organization’s environmental impact. The constant and consistent monitoring of assets and resources ensures the identification of looming problems and failure, allowing proactive steps to be taken before there is an adverse effect on operations. Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities help to prioritize which assets need attention first, in terms of both operational efficiency and environmental efficiency. Not only does this help to mitigate against unplanned downtime due to asset failure, but it ensures the optimal condition of all assets for maximum energy efficiency and minimum waste, as well as lengthening the lifespan of assets too.

By harnessing asset performance data, delivering unprecedented insight into asset and resource performance, cloud-based analytics platforms can underpin better, faster decision-making. Again, this can result in real progress when it comes to reducing a business’s environmental impact. Decision-makers can confidently pursue ambitious waste reduction and energy-saving strategies safe in the knowledge that they won’t adversely impact operations. They can have instant access to the precise, timely and contextualized insight needed to inform such decisions, building a business that’s not only sustainable from an environmental point of view but with a sustainable growth trajectory too.

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Environmental Best Practice

Businesses are undoubtedly under more pressure than ever to lessen their environmental impact and industry 4.0 is definitely an approach that can help to achieve this. What it doesn’t require is wholesale digital transformation. The right targeted enhancements can be enough to leverage the data needed to build an environmentally sound organization that can lead the way when it comes to environmental best practices. 

Asset efficiency should lie at the very heart of a business’s environmental strategy, with cloud-based analytics platforms providing that all-important connected view of asset performance, able to extrapolate maximum value from the data available for the benefit of the business and the environment. In the quest to reduce their environmental impact, more and more businesses are embracing industry 4.0 without having to invest heavily in a supporting IT infrastructure. Instead, they choose to make the most of their existing assets to boost performance and stay competitive in an era where being environmentally responsible is no longer merely a choice but a prerequisite for the foreseeable future.

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