Philip Harting, Chairman of the Board at the HARTING Technology Group, gives a thought-provoking impulse how the customer becomes a co-creator on his way to his individual solution:
"Industrie 4.0 stands for complex value creation networks. The most innovative customer journey, however, ultimately only represents the distribution of a product. How does this all fit together? Industrie 4.0 as a trailblazer of Integrated Industry is usually discussed solely in the production environment. The enablers of Integrated Industry have long since been defined for production and are being implemented, as evidenced by the new lifecycle services now available with the HARTING MICA, for example. It is only slowly becoming clear for sales-side business processes that the historical separation between manufacturers and customers cannot be maintained if the advantages of Integrated Industry are to be exploited. Of course, there will also be products in the future which come about in isolated manner and which will subsequently be presented to the customer via the sales side. But tailor-made solutions are becoming increasingly important. The customer gets involved in value creation much earlier – all the way into development. However, since there is no product here, the classic role of the customer and manufacturer is eliminated. The customer becomes a co-creator on the path to the desired solution. The tools of digitisation support this process. Working effectively in complex value networks can only be accomplished in conjunction with them, in which case the journey into the world of Integrated Industry becomes a shared course. Our current edition of tec.news outlines how this Integrated Industry journey is already uniting customers and manufacturers today."
