In the Navy, knowing the “Speed of Advance,” or how quickly we travel toward a goal or objective, has a clear definition: Combine people, processes, and technology with as little waste as possible to achieve the mission. When Groover moved into the business world, he saw no such alignment. Workers accepted error as a part of the process. Technology was abundant, but use of it was often wasteful rather than lean.
Groover is an ex-Naval officer and author of Speed of Advance: How the U.S. Navy’s Convergence of People, Process, and Technology Can Help Your Business Win in the 4th Industrial Revolution.
As the world ramps up to Industry 4.0, Groover finally sees businesses on a trajectory to align with that Naval precision. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, is a fully-automated production system using robotics and machine intelligence to sense, predict and interact with the physical world, with the speed to make decisions in real-time. It’s accelerated by the newest technology and enables people to be more productive, with lean teams and processes resulting in maximum efficiency. To compete at the Speed of Advance toward Industry 4.0 in manufacturing means shortening the supply chain, a necessary move that is now more critical than ever.
The Navy’s Speed of Advance is Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is already happening, with new technologies applied across the value chain, from sensors, the internet of things (IoT) and cloud technology, to advanced analytics and artificial intelligence combined with human-machine interaction and advanced engineering. The World Economic Forum estimates that Industry 4.0 technologies can boost production line efficiency and save energy through optimization.
But Groover already saw Industry 4.0 play out in the Navy. In the 1980’s, the enemy tracking system on his first ship required an operations specialist listening to reports through a radio headset and using a grease pencil to mark points on a clear plastic board. With the technology that came in the decades to follow, he could see the whole world on a single screen, in real-time, close enough to make out individuals on the ground.
“I actually clicked on an F-18 over the battle, saw a paring line down to a Humvee with a Marine in it, and watched it drop a laser-guided bomb in support of the Marines in Fallujah, all remotely through a COP (common operational picture) — essentially a cloud,” he said. “Imagine if the whole supply chain was connected like that, automatically self-healing, self-compensating, and self-planning without people having to get in the middle of it.”
In air warfare, Groover said improving the Speed of Advance was necessary because lives were at stake. To compete against an enemy, the Navy needed capabilities to manage that speed most efficiently, so they built machine learning systems to react faster. Humans only acted by exception if they ever needed to intervene. By taking humans out of the loop where their role would be better accomplished by technology and giving them other work that only they could do, productivity went through the roof.
After leaving the Navy to work for one of the world’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers, Groover realized how advanced Navy technology was compared to the private sector and how much it improved his ability to meet objectives. He was surprised by how much error and waste companies were willing to tolerate as the cost of doing business. That’s when he started implementing the Speed of Advance playbook to converge people, processes and technology for greater productivity. “Like Marty McFly with my Sports Almanac, it was amazing to see the past repeat itself.” This perspective, he said, helped him understand why Industry 4.0 was so important. “When I first heard of it, I had already seen the future in the Navy, and I knew where the industry needed to go to achieve it.”
The critical need to fix a broken supply chain
The global supply chain is one of humanity’s most complicated systems, and before COVID, there were a lot of inefficiencies in that process. For decades, manufacturing in places like China had been on the rise as more American companies outsourced their processes, drastically cutting production costs, but creating a very long and complex supply chain. Companies at home focused on the challenging task of predicting which goods to stockpile, driving demand for warehouse space while losing major manufacturing capabilities.
Now, ports are backed up with freighters unable to unload, clogging up the route for those coming in behind them. Truck drivers who make money on miles driven are stuck waiting at ports, not getting paid because everything is backed up, leading to a shortage of truck drivers. People are worrying over rising food costs as they get harder to import and are frustrated over shipping delays in expensive items like kitchen appliances. Even Tesla is concerned over the continued shortage of computer chips, which could threaten the American industry. The pandemic taught us that a very long supply chain is also a very fragile one.
Bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
The Navy’s Speed of Advance and Industry 4.0 are the same strategy and looking at digital retail giant Amazon is a great way to understand it. In its pursuit of streamlined efficiency, Amazon has set the speed of retail through fast and convenient access to a world of products. Order something one day and receive it the next. Now, manufacturers need to live within that infrastructure — automation, robotics and technologies beyond human capabilities — to compete.
But lugging goods around the world and storing them in warehouses is hardly the most efficient way to do it. Germany in 2017 launched a plan to safeguard its global manufacturing leadership. Through digitization and interconnection of products, value chains and business models, Germany hoped to boost its international manufacturing competitiveness and create better jobs. The shorter supply chain that resulted also provides more reliable production and consumption within the country.
Manufacturers here can use Industry 4.0 technologies to get similar results and bring skilled jobs back to the United States.
Automation and robotics can improve speed for greater productivity and reduce the need for unskilled labor, drastically cutting production costs. A reskilled workforce can leverage human-machine interfaces such as augmented and virtual reality to create digital twins and test products and procedures with greater levels of safety and reliability, reducing the cost of innovation. More efficient warehousing and distribution can also lower costs, leaving fewer incentives to outsource processes to other countries.
Already, several large companies are seeing this onshore advantage. Ford Motor Co. just invested $11.4 billion in upgrading three battery factories and a truck plant to build an entire line of electric vehicles in the United States. Intel is spending over $40 billion in its efforts to bring chip manufacturing back to the country. Even Japanese automotive behemoth Honda, which has invested $4.3 billion in U.S. manufacturing in the last five years, is seeing the trend. If everything has to be updated anyway, the leanest response, as Groover would put it, is to invest in a shortened supply chain.
How Industry 4.0 grows
We have the data, the technology to harmonize it and industries needing Industry 4.0 intervention, but as with any new technology, companies need a strategy to implement it. Getting all that data to communicate from one system is the first challenge, and it requires a network to support massive real-time needs.
Currently, 5G private networks are the best technology we have to support the IoT and Industry 4.0. As businesses automate their operations and their stakeholders do the same, they need secure, interference-free broadband. Existing Wi-Fi networks were not built for this purpose and lack the security, reliability and bandwidth needed to drive new technologies in the modern era. With private 5G, businesses get a private wireless solution that is reliable, secure, deploys rapidly and gives them superior bandwidth for all current and future automation needs.
The pandemic caused many companies to freeze their Industry 4.0 upgrade initiatives, but with the state of the supply chain and inflation nearing a breaking point, it’s time to invest in that Speed of Advance. Industry 4.0 technologies, converged with people and processes in the leanest way possible, can bring manufacturing closer to the consumer, creating shorter, more reliable supply chains with less of a global impact.
Johan Bjorklund is Chief Executive Officer of Betacom, a private wireless solution provider headquartered in Bellevue, Wash.