Abstract
This paper firstly argued what the German initiative, Industrie 4.0, is and what perspective we should examine it from, standing on the management arena. And then, we took up two cases of FA system makers, SIMENS and Mitsubishi Electric. The former has been dealing with Industrie 4.0 as a digital enterprise. Mitsubishi, one of the Japanese leading FA companies was taken up as an example of typical Japanese business. Through this comparison, we considered some possible risks the Japanese FA companies may face with to maintain the present competitiveness.
Under the Industrie 4.0, it is said all elements of the value chain will be digitalized and be networked vertically and horizontally. In such a circumstance, we suggested companies will be required to rethink about not only how to run their factory system but also their business models, and to make a decision on their business boundary. In addition, we have to take into account standardization strategy and its profit mechanism as the German companies implement because standardization is a base of CPS in Industrie 4.0. In that case, we should keep in mind that Software architecture plays more important a role than that of Hardware does.
After we compared SIEMENS’ strategy for Industrie 4.0 and Mitsubishi’s present business style, we suggested some gaps between them and some possible risks that Mitsubishi may be faced with.
As a limitation, our discussion is based on the ongoing phenomenon of the two companies. Therefore our consideration should be examined by further researches. But if there may be any contributions in this paper, it might give some implications in management side of Industrie 4.0, amid of the technology-oriented arguments on how and what to connect.
Future researches to be explored will be 1) to consider analytic frameworks of how architecture shift from Hardware-oriented to Software-oriented under the digitalization will impact on corporate competitive advantages, 2) to examine theories of “boundary of firm” under the digitalization, 3) to consider how to tackle with organizational inertia the big companies may face with when they change itself to implement innovation. Industrie 4.0 is a phenomenon worth researching because it may have various aspects of innovation.
