The state of Industry 4.0 in Australia/New Zealand

Here is our take on the status of IIoT in Australia today. 

Medulla attended the "3rd Annual Industrial Industry 4.0 Summit", a 3 day conference outlining the state of industrial automation and digitisation in Australia & NZ. Here are our our key takeaways:

1. Participation was up significantly from last year, a strong sign of the growing interest from manufacturers to adopt a digital strategy.
   
   • Senior managers from >70 companies represented, including: Thales, Boeing, Cisco, Bluescope, Fontera, Asahi, Bega Cheese, Cook Medical, Cochlear, Ampcontrol, plus many other SME manufacturers.
2. Paper-based record keeping is still prevalent across all industries.  Less than 10% of the audience indicated their company had adequate automation or digital operations.
3. Food & Bev industry is leading the way in adoption of IIoT and Industry 4.0 best practice. Fontera is probably the most advanced of them all!

In a panel discussion, John Broadbent (Medulla's industry adviser) described the challenge faced by Operations & Engineering Managers when putting together a business case for adopting higher levels of digitisation or automation. The ROI is hard to quantify, and will likely be zero in the first year. Digitisation should be looked at as a minimum 3 year project, with ROI expected in years 3 to 5. The overwhelming consensus is clear - those who fail to go digital will struggle to compete.