A Digital World

Through our previous activities with FUCHS, we had already established a thriving network including various subsidiaries across the FUCHS world. This naturally made things easier for us as we were able to exploit various opportunities to present our company and to encourage their employees to share their ideas, contacts and approaches to the topic of digitalization with us.  The  feedback  was  overwhelming – and remains so to this day. Every week we receive several emails alerting us to interesting projects or start-ups active in the field of digitalization. We are delighted by this and it is also very important to us that the contact should be informal, unstructured and above all direct.
This personal exchange is helpful – essential, even – when it comes to understanding local or cultural nuances and including these in future considerations.

The founding of inoviga as a think-tank and strategic driver was an important step. Plus, the introduction of a group-wide IT system and the restructuring of SAP also play a role. The creation of the ‘Digital Board’ as a globally active committee, in which I will also participate, will ensure processes are managed on a worldwide basis and will bring together these three areas. I think this set-up will stand FUCHS in good stead. inoviga is now focusing on three elements:

• instilling the importance and opportunities of digitalization in our colleagues’  mindsets
• creating the foundations for digital services: sensors, simulation approaches, shared databases, processes and organizational structures
• developing and testing alternative and complementary business models.

When approaches evolve into projects, we work together with our colleagues on opportunities to take them forward, link up with internal networks and act as the driving force behind them. Our team relies on the cooperation of the operative units in implementing these. Of course, we recognize that it is not always easy for colleagues to take the required time out of their everyday work. That said, we often find a great deal of enthusiasm for participating in these projects, which are often  anything  but everyday! In addition to the topics suggested to us, we also pursue our own approaches, based on research and internal observations. We intend to present our projects on a regular basis through the global intranet and to create a dedicated homepage. In this regard, it is crucial that we help to gather the many ideas and approaches together into an overall strategy for the group. We have to tackle this together and get projects up and running with a globally consistent approach.

I would like to point to two specific challenges. In our world of Facebook, chat tools and Amazon, users expect their problem to be solved or product to be provided at the touch of a button and regardless of regional or departmental responsibilities. This begs the question: how  can we support customers and products with, for example, a web-based maintenance solution if neither the initial inquiry or error report can be clearly geographically identified or the product in question is not clearly defined?

Or another example: if we are to offer functionality instead of a product, then we have to be constantly aware of the product’s status when used in a machine or car, for example. We need comprehensive systems with sensors and tracking solutions that are able to operate automatically or even to order replacement parts. Whole  departments  such as Global Production Planning, Logistics, Warehousing and Accounting will have to be integrated into such a system. A project in Baden-Württemberg has approached this positively, completing a successful first run to see what additional benefit we can generate from existing data in partnership with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The results indicate that the approach has plenty to offer, and has led to further projects in the field.

I prefer to explain this using an example: in the transport world, traffic lights work just fine. But what if the vehicles themselves could decide when it was best to accelerate or slow down? Traffic would run much more efficiently and faster. This is the approach taken by Industry 4.0: through digitalization, machines and systems will optimize and organize themselves, increasing both quality and output.

We have more than 5000 specialists with various focuses, who mostly take a critical view of FUCHS while at the same time keeping up-to-date with all of the news surrounding FUCHS. Plus, we have a culture that not only allows ideas, opinions and projects to be shared, but actively promotes this. In inoviga, we will finally remove all of the hurdles obstructing ideas and visions. We are not just offering to take care of this issue, it’s a promise. The fact that we are not part of an operating unit, and especially that we are able to think and work unconventionally, allows us to drive projects forward using ‘other’ approaches. The use of external experts in the course of the process is, of course, not to be ruled out.

It helps to look at this question from two angles: FUCHS 4.0 covers the internal view, while Lubricants 4.0 represents the external view. When we look at the company, we can identify multiple areas of potential for supporting our operations and employees using digital tools. Whether they be simulation approaches in product development, big data concerns in production or the use of digital technologies such as e-learning or smart devices in training and operation, the examples are  countless.

Looking outwards as part of Lubricants 4.0, the situation is more complex. We have to position our products in a world in which everything ‘talks’ to everything else – machines included. Machine tools will want to  increase their efficiency while taking into account the lubricant status. The car of the future will no longer require a human to know whether it needs a service, but it will need to be informed about the status of its operational materials. As such, as well as teaching our products to speak, we must also ensure that we react when the lubricant calls. And then there’s the broad field of (online) platforms and e-commerce: which do not stop at national or departmental boundaries – topics we also have to deal with. The deciding factor will be  how we can generate added value with these developments.