Johann Soder, board member, COO and visionary at SEW Eurodrive, made it very clear: "We have to destroy the extant in a creative manner." He believes that digitalization requires a radical rethink. Using SEW as an example, Soder showed how production will look in the future. According to his example, it will be modular, flexible and agile. It will interact with people and enable intelligent cooperation between humans and technology. In the future, orders will find their own way to production, which is the ultimate meaning of the "smart factory 4.0." There will still be people in production, although they will be more qualified than they are currently. However, we will work differently, train differently and develop different working and employment models. The SEW COO feels that a holistic approach is required here, with speed being the decisive competitive advantage. So what will the value chains of the future look like? Soder believes that production will consist of flexible and modular applications which are changeable and adaptable and also integrate logistics processes - the key word here being agility. Collected data forms the basis for improving processes. Automation technology connects the real world with the digital world, as demonstrated by the assistance systems which will be used to support people in the future. For this to work, standardized interfaces are a necessity. Soder stresses that companies must always ensure the correct infrastructure is in place: "Young people want to swipe, not enter numbers on a computer." The digital factory, which is organized in a modular manner, enables an ideal status to be planned. Data is then collected and evaluated in real processes and improved with the ideal state as a target. This, he continues, is how management will be organized in the future, with factories being planned and "tested" virtually before they are built.
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