Projects that start with a platform choice rarely reach production. Those that start with a decision to inform almost always do.
Most "Industry 4.0" programmes we are asked to rescue started the same way: a vendor demo, an attractive dashboard, and a budget approved on the spot. Eighteen months later the platform is installed, data flows in, and nobody uses it.
The symptom: data with no reader
Collecting has become easy and cheap. That is exactly what makes the trap effective: we instrument because we can, without asking who will read the measurement and what they will do with it. A vibration sensor fitted to a non-critical motor produces a flawless history that nobody will ever open.
Before adding a sensor, name the person who will change their behaviour because of it.
Reversing the order of the questions
We always start from the decision and work backwards:
- Which decision is currently made blind, or too late?
- Who makes it, how often, and with what acceptable delay?
- Which quantity, measured to what accuracy, would change that decision?
- Does that quantity already exist somewhere, in a controller or a spreadsheet?
That last question holds surprises. At one machining site we supported, 70 % of the data needed to calculate OEE already existed in the controllers. It simply never travelled beyond the HMI panel.
A narrow scope, but a complete one
One fully instrumented line whose results the shop manager reads every morning beats twenty partially equipped lines whose screens nobody looks at. The pilot scope must run the full chain: measurement, calculation, display, and above all an operating routine.
Once that routine exists, the roll-out sells itself: the other workshops start asking for it.
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