Strategies and tools for industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is a frame for the application of different digital technologies (e.g. Internet of things, machine learning and robotics) that can significantly modify or disrupt several industrial and service sectors. The course aims at providing students with a comprehensive understanding of Industry 4.0 objectives, framework and methodologies to face the complexity of implementing an Industry 4.0 strategy (decision making, problem solving, project management, change management) and its disruptive potential (automation, breakthrough in process management, new products/business models, etc.). To get this goal, the course will deep dive the main digital technologies that are state of the art in Industry 4.0, through business cases that will clarify the benefits, but also the risk and the complexity of their full implementation in the real-life context. To this purpose, a focus will be on the "human side" of Industry 4.0 that remains the key success factor: new skills, new ways of working, new organizational setup. The educational objectives will be pursued with constant exchange and critical discussion with and among the students, with a fact-based approach and taking advantage of individual and group activities.

The main expected result for the participants in the course is the practical learning on how to effectively approach an Industry 4.0 project or becoming a contributing innovator in a company with a strategic roadmap to Industry 4.0. Students will be able to frame the complexity of Industry 4.0, selecting the different opportunities behind the disruptive digital technologies, identifying the main objectives of their application and setting the main risks to be considered in approaching an Industry 4.0 change. Additionally, students will learn what are the skills to be further deepen to increase expertise in applying Industry 4.0 principles.