SURVEY: Future Outlook: Hazy

While pandemic disruptions created a rush to move to M4.0, MLC’s latest Factories of the Future survey finds those plans have often been struck with a reality check.

On the long, winding, and sometimes grueling journey toward digital transformation, manufacturers may often feel they are attempting a Sisyphean task. A successful pilot launches but never scales. A strong business case is made for a new technology, but the C-suite is reluctant to invest. Initiatives falter under the weight of talent shortages or change-resistant business cultures.

It’s little wonder that it takes time to move the M4.0 needle in a meaningful way. But results from the MLC’s latest Factories of the Future survey indicate that some progress is happening – if not holistically, at least in a partial sense.

Fervor Gets a Wake-Up Call

One of the most interesting findings of this survey was the impact of COVID-19 on the pace of M4.0 adoption. Prior surveys conducted by the MLC overwhelmingly revealed that manufacturers were hastening the tempo of their digital investments in the wake of the pandemic. However, respondents to this survey were almost evenly divided between those saying adoption had accelerated (30%), decelerated (32%), or had not changed (35%) (Chart 3).

Likely this is because while manufacturers had a great need to implement technology solutions to address the myriad challenges the pandemic brought about, the enthusiasm for many of those plans has been met with some cold business realities. These could be shortages in tech-proficient talent, the inability to obtain technology due to supply issues, and/or the need to invest capital in other areas of the business, especially as costs have risen for raw materials, shipping, and other essentials.

Overall, most manufacturers give themselves a low to mid-level grade on their M4.0 maturity – somewhere between a 3 and a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 (Chart 1). But when compared to results from the 2021 version of this same survey, fewer respondents said they were defining a roadmap and more said they had moved to experimenting with a range of small-scale pilot projects (Chart 2).

Survey development was led by Penelope Brown, with input from the MLC editorial team and the MLC’s Board of Governors.