SAP : WHITE PAPER of experts worked in collaboration . Excavators worked around the clock to dig the bulbous bow of the container ship out of the sand . Dredgers were called upon , who understood the crosssectional area of the Suez canal , and exactly where to dig to help refloat the vessel . And there were the pilots on board who understood that an approaching high tide would give an extra two metres of lift . In essence , this was a microcosm of modern business , where siloed departments use their expertise to help a business reach its objectives .
“ What happened in the Suez is that these dredgers , excavators , tug boats and pilots all pooled their information together and realised that they can actually refloat this ship in five days and let it sail ,” Hancock says . " Go back 20 or even 10 years and this information would have been in people ’ s heads , in different places , and instead the situation would ’ ve taken weeks and required the costly job of removing containers . That ’ s a good illustration of where Industry 4.0
What we mean by Empowered People is empowering individuals to be agile in the moment
brings all of these technology enablers to empower people to make those informed decisions .”
EMPOWERING THE WORKPLACE In less extraordinary circumstances , Empowered People is realised through a layering of information that filters throughout an organisation .
“ Start with the operator who has maybe one or two pieces of equipment to run . To empower that operator to do his job efficiently , he needs to know if it ’ s running correctly , if it ’ s going out of bounds , does he need an indicator to do something in order to avoid a failure ? That ’ s the basic level ,” Hancock says . “ We then lift it up to the next layer , moving from operational execution to areas of financial core values . The plant manager can collate the information from each of the production lines , assess the KPI , form a plan , and measure that against their actuals .”
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