Despite the tangible promise of Industry 4.0, many digital transformation projects simply don’t deliver real, lasting value. The problem? The absence of a unified digital architecture that should give manufacturers control over their own data – and the flexibility to scale.

Your factory is not the vendor’s playground

Over the past two decades, we’ve toured factories across the globe and partnered with manufacturers at various points along their digital journeys. A recurring challenge emerges: every machine vendor brings their own digital strategy. Their own analytics tools. Their own dashboards. Their own protocols.

While each solution is effective in its own right, this fragmented landscape of proprietary systems creates a big problem. Collecting and processing data in isolation makes integration difficult, if not impossible. The result is that critical data is trapped in silos, rendering it useless for plant-wide optimisation.

This isn’t just a technical limitation – it’s a strategic risk.

What smart architecture looks like

To mitigate this risk, we proposed a different approach at a recent strategy session with a large multinational manufacturing company.

It starts with smart architecture – building a unified, vendor-agnostic data layerthat acts as the digital backbone of the factory. Instead of machines being locked to fixed settings, each asset – whether a filler, press, or test bench – should be designed to interface with a central data model.

On startup, the machine sends queries to the system about targets – such as weights, speeds, tolerances and sequences – and receives those from the centralised database.

After the operation, it returns performance, quality, and downtime data to the same system. This structure allows Machine A to inform Machine B – even if they come from different vendors – because they’re all communicating through the same digital infrastructure.

This foundation is critical to enabling:

• Closed-loop control
• Real-time optimisation
• Predictive and prescriptive data analytics

Without this architecture, even the most advanced AI predictions have no pathway to influence real-world operations.

Back to the (drawing) board

Here’s the harsh truth: many leadership teams don’t yet grasp the importance of digital architecture as the point of departure.

Too often, digital investments focus on surface-level wins – a dashboard here, a sensor there. But without a cohesive supporting framework, these efforts remain isolated. They fail to scale, and the long-term impact never materialises.

This is why digital transformation needs board-level attention. Architecture is a strategic asset – not an IT line item.

Boards need technically informed voices who understand interoperability, data ownership, and platform design.

A new rule book for machine vendors

Our proposition is this: From the outset, factories must define the data standards like any other machine specification.

Every new machine must:

• Request its operating parameters from the plant’s centralised data model.
• Report back structured data – including process results, quality metrics, and downtime events.
• Support open communication protocols (e.g., OPC UA, MQTT, REST APIs).

This puts the control back in the hands of the manufacturer. The plant, not the OEM, owns the master data, recipes, and logic. This reduces vendor dependency, boosts flexibility, and enables cross-line optimisation.

Here’s how to start

This approach doesn’t require a full digital overhaul from day one. It can grow incrementally. Here’s how to begin the process:

1. Audit your assets: Identify what data your equipment produces or could produce.
2. Define your data standards: Establish a structure for how product, process, and machine data should be captured.
3. Embed open standards in procurement: Require vendors to support your digital integration strategy.
4. Create a central data hub: Even a basic unified database can lay the groundwork for more sophisticated use cases.

The goal is to establish a shared language for your machines, systems, and teams – a digital foundation that grows with your operations.

Data is the new utility

Much like electricity or compressed air, data must become a utility in modern factories. It should flow freely, be universally available, and serve every function – from operations to engineering to quality assurance.

Until manufacturers take control of this layer, they will remain at the mercy of vendor constraints. But by building a vendor-neutral, interoperable architecture, they unlock a future of real-time insight, adaptive control, and continuous improvement.

The foundation of smart manufacturing is not a dashboard – it’s data ownership.