Making the Transition to Industry 4.0

All transformations are hard, but the benefits of moving into the future of manufacturing are many and pave the way for sustainability. This was the theme during a joint manufacturing event at Stena Industry Innovation Lab in Gothenburg in collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology, PTC, Rockwell Automation and Microsoft. The conclusion? The best way to become future-ready is to get started.

IoT adoption is still in its early stages, according to our research in collaboration with Oxford Economics. Those ahead in IoT though, tend to lead in several other digital areas too: IoT leaders adopt digital technologies, especially analytics and AI, at a higher rate than laggards.

The data and analytics landscape is changing fast, but if you can’t demonstrate the business value in AI, data and analytics initiatives it can lead to reduced budget and lack of involvement for these initiatives. A key factor is to quickly find out the current state of maturity. With our Rapid assessment framework, you can clarify your status – within a week.

Whether it’s migrating the entire core infrastructure to cloud service providers, or just simplifying a handful of processes, the cloud represents the digital future. However, companies are struggling to deliver digital initiatives due to lack of expertise, especially in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) domain. To help customer solve the competence challenge, Cognizant is increasing its investments in the Cognizant AWS Business Group.

Finland has, for the first time, been ranked number one in the annual international comparison of sustainable development ranking published by the UN and the Bertelsmann Foundation. The comparison assesses countries’ progress on implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals. But what does this mean for Finland and business in Finland?

It is almost an understatement to call sustainability a mega trend. It is no longer something that enterprises do of pure goodwill – it benefits the business as well. Even if it sounds far-fetched, IT plays an important role on the agenda.

In the beginning of December, Cognizant gathered clients over lunch for a roundtable discussion with speakers from PostNord, Celonis and Cognizant that shared the latest within Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

Besides establishing our own net-zero agenda, Cognizant will extend the expertise in cloud, IoT and AI to help our clients meet their sustainability goals, reduce their carbon footprints and sharpen their competitiveness. Our clients in Europe are leading the way in some critical areas, but we need more green leadership to get further with sustainability.

Cognizant has been present in Finland for 12 years, and we are committed to helping our clients in Finland and across the Nordics region accelerate their transition to digital business models. In Q3, Cognizant’s business outside of the U.S. grew approximately 16% year-over-year in constant currency and we are continuing to build our capabilities in the Nordics.

In my previous article, I covered the status of food waste and sustainable food production in the Nordics. Now I’m looking into areas with potential for improvements and the digital solutions that can enable the transition towards sustainability in the food industry.

With the injection of the new technologies into traditional industrial processes, the modern factory floor will extend to new areas and change the interplay of process roles. This can also enable new operational models as well as new business models.

How can Nordic companies extend automation initiatives throughout the enterprise to maximize gains? Currently, automation silos between different tech initiatives prevent teams from reaping the synergies and reaching their digital transformation goals. This is exactly what Cognizant Neuro addresses; it sits on top of automation tools, forming a single, intuitive automation fabric.