46 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine Digital natives of Industry 4.0: A case of transit startup In the manufacturing world, people tend to ignore the potential of digital natives and their disruptive impact. e.GO, a German automobile startup, has achieved spectacular Industry 4.0 maturity in fewer than five years since its foundation in 2015. All aspects of e.GO’s story is embellished with disruptive innovation as a coherent suite of strategic choices, which manifests signs of visionary leadership. Professor Günther Schuh, e.GO’s founder, is an academician, an entrepreneur and an industrialist. e.GO focuses on short-range urban transportation, an underserved and less contested niche of the automobile market. e.GO’s vision is to make electric cars affordable to the masses to help human civilization reduce carbon emissions faster. But e.GO is not only a carmaker; its portfolio includes automated minibuses. Interestingly, e.GO, at its core, is actually a mobility solution provider that develops data-based business models and business apps around multimodality and traffic bundling. Enter internet of production The great leadership, strategy and innovation at e.GO relies on a state-of- the-art engineering and production system and its own unique approach to Industry 4.0. With the advantage of being a startup without legacy inertia, e.GO started with a clean IT architecture that unifies the product life cycle and the production system into a seamless whole. e.GO calls this architecture the internet of production (IoP). The foundation of IoP is the collection of data of all physical assets, such as tools, sensors or products. Typical enterprise applications are con- nected to an Internet of Things middle layer. In the middle layer of IoP, the data is refined, integrated and served to use case-based endpoints on the decision support layer at the top. As you can see in Figure 1, all stages of value creation are covered. Data flows freely and there is no room for analog information. Hyperfast iterative development As a startup, e.GO does not have deep pockets. Thus, agility and efficien- cy are mandatory. Thanks to the unified information architecture, e.GO can truly apply agility by iterating both on the product and on processes with feedback loops shorter than a day, sometimes within an hour or even in minutes. The unified information architecture not only fosters agile principles and reduces overall IT costs but also enables citizen developers. IoP offers open real-time access to all systems vertically and horizon- tally. Thus, citizen developers enabled with IoP can develop apps in min- Solutions in practice by Thomas Gartzen and Eren Yilmaz case study
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46 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
Digital natives of Industry 4.0: A case of transit startupIn the manufacturing world, people tend to ignore the potential of digital natives and their disruptive impact. e.GO, a German automobile startup, has achieved spectacular Industry 4.0 maturity in fewer than five years since its foundation in 2015.
All aspects of e.GO’s story is embellished with disruptive innovation as a coherent suite of strategic choices, which manifests signs of visionary leadership. Professor Günther Schuh, e.GO’s founder, is an academician, an entrepreneur and an industrialist.
e.GO focuses on short-range urban transportation, an underserved and less contested niche of the automobile market. e.GO’s vision is to make electric cars affordable to the masses to help human civilization reduce carbon emissions faster. But e.GO is not only a carmaker; its portfolio includes automated minibuses. Interestingly, e.GO, at its core, is actually a mobility solution provider that develops data-based business models and business apps around multimodality and traffic bundling.
Enter internet of production The great leadership, strategy and innovation at e.GO relies on a state-of-the-art engineering and production system and its own unique approach to Industry 4.0. With the advantage of being a startup without legacy inertia, e.GO started with a clean IT architecture that unifies the product life cycle and the production system into a seamless whole. e.GO calls this architecture the internet of production (IoP).
The foundation of IoP is the collection of data of all physical assets, such as tools, sensors or products. Typical enterprise applications are con-nected to an Internet of Things middle layer. In the middle layer of IoP, the data is refined, integrated and served to use case-based endpoints on the decision support layer at the top. As you can see in Figure 1, all stages of value creation are covered. Data flows freely and there is no room for analog information.
Hyperfast iterative developmentAs a startup, e.GO does not have deep pockets. Thus, agility and efficien-cy are mandatory. Thanks to the unified information architecture, e.GO can truly apply agility by iterating both on the product and on processes with feedback loops shorter than a day, sometimes within an hour or even in minutes. The unified information architecture not only fosters agile principles and reduces overall IT costs but also enables citizen developers.
IoP offers open real-time access to all systems vertically and horizon-tally. Thus, citizen developers enabled with IoP can develop apps in min-
Solutions in practice by Thomas Gartzen and Eren Yilmaz
case study
April 2021 | ISE Magazine 47
utes. This is what e.GO calls the “app factory approach.” The apps do not replace the functions of the conventional IT systems in the company but rather complement them where the standard systems reach their limits. Through IoP-based apps, using critical information across systems is significantly simplified.
As Figure 1 depicts, IoP digitalizes the life cycle of prod-ucts as an integral part of the value creation. By having digi-tal shadows of each car it produces, in context of a digital ecosystem, e.GO is able to offer digital innovations at speeds unimaginable in the conventional automobile industry.
All in all, IoP elegantly enables e.GO’s vision to offer af-fordable electromobility solutions made in Germany, a high-wage country and origin of the Industry 4.0 concept.
IoP is a closed loop information systemIn conventional IT architecture, information is pushed from product development to production and then to the customer in a one-way street. With IoP architecture, the automated feedback loops from individual products then enable real-time iterative product development. e.GO calls this “closing the loop.” Through these iterative bidirectional processes, a company’s agility is significantly increased through faster in-formation flow and better decisions.
To illustrate this for e.GO, the weight of the vehicle is critical for its performance. With the help of a weight man-agement app and granular weight data in product lifecycle management (PLM), designers can make decisions com-pletely using virtual design and testing tools. This and other similar functionalities make the design process efficient, fast, agile, transparent and traceable.
Thanks to the integration between PLM, shop floor and
sales, e.GO can seamlessly materialize online sales of a con-figure-to-order product. With the help of a single sales con-figurator on the company’s website, the product is tailored to the customer‘s needs. Orders are processed in a connected web store and automatically forwarded to the planning sys-tem.
Another good example is the user experience and how the usage and utilization data is leveraged in product devel-opment. The horizontal connectivity of IoP provides the usage and utilization data necessary to continuously im-prove the product. By using this field data, e.GO deeply understands how its cars are used and stressed during short-distance drives in urban traffic. These insights are used to improve the customer experience continuously and itera-tively.
Moreover, the IoP allows a seamless and modular inte-gration of all systems. Hence, modular expansion of IoP is simple, such that third party software can be integrated to IoP in record speeds.
Positioned to collaboratee.GO’s success story wouldn’t be possible without the unique ecosystem of the RWTH Aachen Campus, which hosts more than 400 technology companies. Positioned in the RWTH Aachen, e.GO leverages the collaboration-oriented culture of the campus and the easy access to the best scientists and industry experts from all disciplines it needs. On the other hand, e.GO brought an inspiring vision to the ecosystem that attracted young talent and teams of scientists, who in turn jointly developed the e.GO concept as an industry consor-tium.
Lessons learned from e.GO include:
FIGURE 1
Product life cycleIoP digitalizes the life cycle of products as an integral part of the value creation with all stages of value creation covered.
48 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine
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• Industry 4.0 requires true leadership and vision.• e.GO focuses on the speed of progress over speed of actions
and developing capabilities instead of episodical wins.• Industry 4.0 requires strategy. To illustrate this, e.GO is
not only a faster and more efficient company but it also creates a competitive advantage with its ecosystem of digi-tal solutions and services in an underserved market. Also, e.GO serves with environmental consciousness and creates jobs in a high-wage country.
• Industry 4.0 requires digital transformation. Transforma-tion, by definition, is about changing the form and struc-ture. For a manufacturing company, digital transforma-tion starts at the information architecture (IA) of value creation. Anything that does not change the IA is not transformational. Do not mistake digital use cases for digi-tal transformation if the IA is staying the same.
• Industry 4.0 requires systems design. In short, apps work on systems and systems are composed of software, pro-cesses, things and people. And systems run on information architecture. Do not mistake apps for systems. Good apps running on bad systems is like putting a cherry on mud.
• Do not mistake information architecture for data architec-ture. Do not become another data-rich information-poor company.
Eren Yilmaz is currently in Stanley Black & Decker’s Center of Ex-cellence for Industry 4.0 as director of industry 4.0 innovation. Before joining SBD, he took various leadership roles in management con-sulting, home appliances, aerospace and automotive industries with a focus on R&D effectiveness, innovation, digital transformation and technology. He earned his MBA in technology management and has a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. He is an active CSSBB, CMA and PMP. Contact him at [email protected].
Thomas Gartzen, Ph.D., is professor of manufacturing systems at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences and since 2016 has run the European 4.0 Transformation Center (E4TC), a platform on RWTH Aachen Campus where industry and science collaborate in digital transformation. He studied mechanical engineering at RWTH Aachen University. After completing his doctorate in production en-gineering in 2012, he built up the Demonstration Factory Aachen, a reference factory for Industry 4.0, and served as managing director.
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The e.Go startup company relies on Industry 4.0 processes and the Internet of Production to manufacture its electric vehicles for short range urban transportation needs.
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