Industry 4.0: How to Manage Transformation as the New Normal

Ideas in Brief

While the concept of Industry 4.0 has gained enormous interest within the business community, the organizational change required for its successful deployment is still in its infancy. Based on project experience at Villeroy & Boch’s production, we aim to answer the following question: How should a comprehensive approach be designed and what elements should such an approach encompass to overcome the traditional perception that change is not an episodic element but a continuum? What elements does such a comprehensive approach have to cover in order to ensure its guiding relevance within a continuous change environment? Industry 4.0 is not only about technology. It also addresses the DNA of a company leading to a continuous and in-depth change of the business backbone. When a company starts dealing with Industry 4.0, it is about moving out of their traditional industry silos, encouraging innovative thinking which leads to new business capabilities. This is where the need to manage the transformation becomes most significant; unfortunately, this is also where traditional change management methodologies come to its boundaries. Therefore, we need to find concepts and approaches that support this transformation creating the ability to validate potential solutions and opportunities and to encourage innovative thinking to allow the company gaining value on their individual path forward in adopting Industry 4.0. We propose a blended change management approach, adding elements of Design Thinking. The key assumption is that Design Thinking does not only support innovative processes, but helps a corporate culture to continuously allow the required transformation as it is a key cornerstone on our way to make Industry 4.0 successful.