The scope of Industry 4.0 goes beyond the individual company: entire value chains are interconnected and digitized, creating a strong integration of supply and subcontracting chains. It promotes highly customized manufacturing, tailored to the customer, capable of combining large-scale production with the ability to meet niche needs—an essential skill that has always characterized the Italian tradition of manufacturing expertise.
Industry 4.0 leverages the agility and flexibility of Italian SMEs, encouraging their interconnections and district, network, and supply chain clustering, and the transition from a (often conflicting) supplier-customer logic to one of industrial partnership in a competitive, interconnected, and integrated ecosystem.
To seize opportunities, companies must become digitally more mature: much of their hidden competitive advantage lies in the data that is potentially available to them but rarely collected, organized, or processed to extract value. Today, successful companies – especially small ones – have a competitive advantage derived from their “informal knowledge”: the challenge of Industry 4.0, in this perspective, is the formalization of knowledge through its translation into data and its exploitation through appropriate analysis models.
Motive’s knowledge extends 360° in power transmission because it produces both motors and mechanical gearboxes, as well as electronic speed variators. This technical expertise allows Motive to easily guarantee data from various parts of the system. This technical background thus allows them to monitor and delve into every link in the power transmission chain.
If the keyword of Industry 4.0 is interconnection, i.e., having real-time information needed for decision-making, the latest innovative developments in Motive’s configurator (https://www.motive.it/en/configuratore.php) set a new benchmark in the sector, which manufacturers will need to follow. Configurators, as many know, are not new in the mechanical speed reducer sector; they are online tools that allow users to download mechanical drawings and technical sheets of gearmotors along with their accessories. But Motive's configurator goes far beyond this for the following reasons:
1. It’s free and requires no registration. Just click on https://www.motive.it/en/configuratore.php
2. You don’t need to be an industry expert to use it, but you’ll become an expert by using it
3. It speaks 14 languages, with more on the way
4. It allows you to add the electronic speed variator to the gearmotor assembly, so you can see what happens at different speeds or selected loads
5. It now includes hundreds of optional executions interwoven with each other, guiding you to optimize the product for different environments, uses, applications, and installation needs
6. In addition to 2D drawings and 3D models, the result is a sheet that contains not only technical data but also the data/codes necessary for a correct, fast, unique, and unequivocal mutual understanding between the customer’s desires and Motive's production process
7. This advanced selection will soon interface with the customer’s reserved area on the Motive website to also know the final price of the product customized in the configurator