#1 Industry 4.0 Thought Leader on What Manufacturers Get Wrong About Digital Transformation | Insights with Jeff Winter (Belden)

Speaker A: Welcome to the Supply Chain Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Sherri Hinisch, also called the Supply Chain Queen, and I help organizations transform what they move, what they make, and what matters for impact. Today we have an incredible episode, uh, lined up for you. Making Industry 4.0 real. The strategy, the IT and OT convergence, and the Human side of Digital Transformation with Jeff Winter. Jeff helps manufacturers understand that Industry 4.0 is not a tool set to buy. It's a business transformation that requires the right strategy, storytelling, change management, incredible execution across both business and the plant. Four. Welcome, Jeff. I'm so thrilled to finally host you. And we're finally meeting face to face, sort of for the first time. And for folks that don't know who you are, can you share a little bit about your origin, origin story in your career?

Speaker B: Sure. Well, I've been working for about 20 years. I started out of school as a sales engineer, even having an engineering background because I always liked learning how things were made and working with, uh, a bunch of different people in the field. I've always been in the manufacturing industry. I just kind of had different roles looking at that, working at several different automation manufacturers, selling to manufacturers. I then focused on machine safety for a portion of my career and kind of built that up to be a thought leader in that space and end up switching to Industry 4.0 as a different subject while also kind of switching roles at the same time from sales to marketing to strategy. And then the, uh, pandemic happened and I made a very concerted effort to have an active presence on LinkedIn. Thinking boy, whoever, whoever figures this out is going to kind of win at life, or at least in the career side. And it really paid off. It's transformed my career and just kind of personally who I am.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's been an incredible journey. I found you on LinkedIn, actually. And one thing that stands out beyond the hundred million views that you've collected and some notoriety from Analytica as the number one influencer in 2023 in your domain of expertise. Just plug that in. Is the quality of your content and in what can feel like AI slop everywhere, across all channels. LinkedIn in the B2B space is really unique and you have superb quality, my friend, in your content.

Speaker B: Well, thank you. I, um, I enjoy it. It actually has become something that's been very fun for me and that's why I respond to every single comment personally and manually. I'm not using AI for it because I enjoy the community of people that I'm building through this movement.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's incredible. So I want to double click on some of your career experience before we get into Industry 4.0 or Point O, whatever your preference is. So early in your career, you mentioned you worked close with manufacturers, OEMs, automation products and safety solutions, which I didn't know. I'm just learning how did those roles teach you what manufacturers actually need when they are trying to improve operations or really open the aperture and think about the future of work and all of the exponential tech that they need to adopt for real transformation?

Speaker B: So I'd have to say it's kind of interesting because when I started my career as a sales engineer, I had a very specific lens on what the industry, which my industry is manufacturing was doing. And it was through the company I was working with. We had a product and we tried to solve a problem problem. And in sales you're paid based off them, you know, buying that particular solution. But my, my career kind of took a turn while I was at a small industrial safety company called STI, about 250 people or so at the time. And they sold simple safety devices for machineries. Door switches, light curtains, emergency stops, things like that, very simple devices. But then STI launched a safety plc, which is one of the first programmable products the company had ever sol. And it changed the way that I thought about selling. You know, uh, a safety door switch is a component. It had a specific problem that it solved. But a safety PLC is different. It forces you to think about the machine, the process, the design, the risks and the, and the outcome. So instead of selling it as a better safety PLC than competitors, I sold the idea of a safe machine. And that became the turning point. I ended up selling a lot of them. I was the number one salesperson for them enough that the company asked me to present my pitch back to the entire kind of commercial organization. And the president loved me and put me in charge of product marketing for it, which was my first real exposure to marketing. So sales taught me how to message one on one to individuals. Marketing taught me how to message one to many. It taught me to look at the landscape overall. And it resulted, you know, in this experience in, I think it was like a 400% increase in sales and about seven, seven months or so. But that experience pulled me into much bigger questions. And at my next company I worked, I used that same logic to build a business case for a brand new safety practice. And then I had to repeat this process for new practice areas that I did not know as well as machine safety. And it forced me to move beyond product knowledge and think more strategically. You know, what markets are we entering, what problems are we solving? What should customers care about, how do we position it? And eventually strategy became my work that I was in. And ever since kind of being in that for the past six plus years or so, it's changed the way that I've worked with companies as I've kind of built up my brand, learning about the new subject of Industry 4.0 for me over that same timeframe to actually help companies out with their digital transformation journey. So it's kind of funny that I have one foot in my own company helping my company what to do, and one foot kind of externally helping hundreds and hundreds of manufacturers with their Digital Transformation Industry 4.0 journeys.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's fascinating the way that you just described that, because people don't really care necessarily about the product you're selling. And a lot of companies get it wrong when they just talk about the product, the features. You know, sometimes they might have a client hero story and how it's delivered, some benefit, value or outcome through use, through adoption. But oftentimes, and I've had the same experience, people just want to go online and talk about how great their product is and, uh, that people really care. I think they like the storytelling and what's around the product and maybe even talking about it without necessarily mentioning the product or brand. There's always a call to action somewhere. But the way that you've just described how you just thought differently about something that people in your organization at the time had just assumed was natural, it's not. And I think that's why you've also amassed such a large following because you are super creative. Are you a creator? Do you play music? Do you. I know you love Legos and I know you're a builder, but are you musically inclined at all? No.

Speaker B: Musically, my mom was an art teacher, so actually art was a subject that I was pretty, pretty good at. I consider my creativity coming from just honestly driven by fun. A lot of my creativity, even the content that you see is around fun, fun stuff. And I just get more passionate about that in my, my ways of doing it. And what, what you end up remembering is the few ones that were super successful. You may not see a lot of the ones that I thought were pretty creative that didn't do well or didn't resonate the right way, but I stick with it. I try it over and over again. I've had over 1300 posts on LinkedIn. You know, I don't think anyone's seen all of them. So it's just a matter of does the right one resonate the right way at the right time? And if you were to go up those 1300 posts, I bet you there's only like a hundred stories. They're just told in different ways. And some of them really click with some people, Some of them really click with other people. And I just kind of like to, to share that, you know, experience with others. And that's why when it gets to selling I've used, there's three things you can either do. You can either sell the product, which I've never really focused on, maybe early in my career because I was taught that was what you're supposed to do. But then I switch to selling the problem, getting people to really believe in the problem that they have so that they want to take action to solve it, and that you're the answer now. For the past six, seven years, I focused on selling the vision. Do you know what you could do, what a new future looks, what's possible, what can change within your organization? And I felt that that's helped me be more successful and it's moved me up higher within organizations because that's what leaders want to really know is what future are they creating for their company. And if I can help inspire them, that's kind of the sale I actually really want to.

Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that. And I think having fun, finding joy in what you do, it shines through and it creates those glimmer moments in a lot of your content. Let's get back to Industry 4.0 and why it's so hard to translate. And you mentioned setting the vision, imagining a future that may be based on a client's maturity they might not see for themselves. Industry 4.0 can mean a lot of things, A lot of exponential tech, AI, MES, industrial, IoT, automation, digital twins, all the buzzwords. Why do so many manufacturers struggle to turn a lot of those proven concepts, and there's already a business case around a lot of these things into a really, uh, clear path forward.

Speaker B: Industry 4.0 is one of those terms that everyone uses, at least in the world that I'm in. But not everyone uses it the same way or thinks it means the same thing when they say it. And that's why I've learned over time that it can mean both an era that we're living in as well as a future destination. And those are drastically different ways to think about it, and neither are right and neither are wrong. Historically, the term Industry 4.0 came out of Germany around 2011. It was kind of like famously introduced at Hannover Messe as a way to describe the fourth major industrial era. You know, the first was mechanization, the second was mass production and electricity. The third was automation and computerization. And the fourth is the era of connected, intelligent, data driven manufacturing. But just like every previous industrial revolution, it's not only about the technology itself. It's about how the technology changes business, how it changes labor, how it changes compet consumer expectations, and even the definition of what good looks like. So if we think about Industry 4.0 as an era, it describes the industrial period that we're living in right now. And manufacturing is being reshaped by these connected systems, by intelligent technologies and automation, data and AI and new digital infrastructure. But it is bigger than just technology. It's changing the capabilities companies need, it's changing the processes that they rely on, the decisions that get made, the way people work, the way supply chains operate, and even how customers buy things. And in that sense, it's not a project, it's not an initiative, it's the operating environment that we're living in. However, if you view Industry 4.0 as a destination, it becomes more of a vision. It's the ideal end state based off of what is possible with all of today's technologies. A, uh, manufacturing enterprise that's connected, adaptive, data driven, increasingly autonomous, and able to make better decisions faster on their own, completely autonomous. It becomes a description of the art of the possible. And it asks things like, if we fully leveraged every technology out there, what could our business become? But unfortunately, this is where the confusion starts, because there is no universally accepted definition. Ask 10 people at Industry 4.0 means and you will get 12 answers. For some, it means smart factories, for other it means AI, IoT, MES, robotics and tech, and you know, for others, it describes how things are evolving. But they're all incomplete if they're not connected to a broader vision. So I usually tell companies, don't waste too much time trying to find the perfect textbook definition. Create your own working definition. Make it clear enough that your executives, your plant leaders, your engineers, your IT teams, your operators, even finance, everyone understands what does it mean for your company? Because if everyone defined Industry 4.0 differently, they will also fund it differently. They're going to prioritize it differently, they're going to measure it differently, and they're going to argue about it endlessly. And that doesn't result in achieving very much. And that's a big Reason Manufacturers struggle to turn Industry 4.0 into a clear business case. So too often it gets described as the tech. We talk about AI, we talk about Iot, we talk about digital twins and all that's important, but they're not the business case, they're the ingredients. You know, too many things walk into the kitchen holding a bunch of impressive ingredients without knowing what meal they're actually trying to cook. We need AI is not a business case. You know, we lose four hours of production every time the line goes down. And if we can predict failures earlier, reduce unplanned downtime and improved scheduling reliability, that's worth $3 million. Now you have the beginning of a business case. And I also think that manufacturers struggle because the value is usually cross functional, but the budget is always functional. The plant feels the downtime. The IT owns the infrastructure, Engineering owns the equipment, Operations owns the process. Finance wants the roi. Everyone agrees that transformation matters, but no one is actually clear on who owns the outcome. So uh, uh, it becomes something that, like I said, you as an organization need to figure out, what does it mean to you? And with that, here's one of the big things that I usually like to start with. Companies struggle when they start with a noun instead of a verb. They start with things like AI, IoT, MES, digital twin instead of reduce, increase, accelerate, standardize, de risk or enable. That should help you with your use case if you're thinking about those verbs instead of the nouns.

Speaker A: Right. That's wonderful, Jeff. You know, I have a, uh, follow up question. So it's been 15 years since the term was introduced. I think it's time we step into a new era. And it's interesting because you mentioned autonomous when you described Industry 4.0. Have we really gotten to autonomous in the current era or is that more an industry 4.5.0 framing? I mean what does that really mean? As we, you know, we're at frontier AI and a lot of technologies. We haven't mentioned quantum, we haven't mentioned a lot of the really, uh, fully autonomous capability. And there's already, I also come from manufacturing. I mean we already have tons of examples, especially in CPG or fast moving consumer goods where there's completely like lights out manufacturing. And so what does the next era look like? Are we already in that era? It's been 15 years since 2011.

Speaker B: So you will get a lot of debates and arguments over this. And I have kind of my opinion and view on it. This gets back to if you think of Industry 4.0 as an era Then no, we're in the industrial revolution and we have a long time to go before it's complete, before a new entire revolution would start. I mean, if you look at the previous revolutions, they were many, many, many decades long. Fifteen years is not enough to change the industry, it's enough to change individual companies. But I get a lot of people that say things like we're not even done with Industry 3.0 yet and we're already in Industry 4.0. And my response is, is your company still exists? Does it still exist in 2026? Then you survived Industry 3.0, we're done with it. That doesn't mean you achieved the possible perfection point of what Industry 3.0 was at the time. But you lived it. And I guarant guarantee you adapted your company over the past 40 years. You use the Internet, you use computers, you just may not be the best shining star in the industry. Same with Industry 4.0. Companies are adopting these technologies. But if you're going to apply it to the once again, that vision that was originally established back in 2011 and the original vision had like nine pillars associated with it. No, no company is there, but it doesn't change what the vision is. It's not like because of new technologies in the past few years. The vision's it just means it's more palpable, more doable, it's cheaper, it's easier. But the capability that we're working towards in this era is still, I would argue, the same. It's autonomous operations that are data driven. That's kind of where we're at right now. But no, no company is at a perfect level in all of them. And honestly, I don't think any company ever will be or should be. It's about the fact that once you get enough companies to adopt enough of those things, you notice an entire revolution happening in the industry. And I, I view it as we're in the middle of that. Yes, you hear things like Industry 5.0, that's out there. And a small, you know, some small groups in Europe have used that term. If you view Industry 4.0 as a destination based off those original nine pillars, think of Industry 5.0 as the, the next extension of that, like an updated version with some additional focuses on human centricity and sustainability and stuff like that. But if you view it as a description of the era which most of the world thinks there is no industry 5.0, it's all industry 4.0. It's just, it's evolving as we Learn more, which I think is perfectly natural and expected.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love your perspective. And also I think digital transformation gets overused as opposed to analog. Uh, we're kind of in the era already. But what does it really require? And when a manufacturer is serious about digital transformation, from your perspective, what has to be true inside the organization before the technology, as you rightly have mentioned in your previous comment, that can actually create value. You mentioned human centricity, which I'd love to hear more about that.

Speaker B: So when a manufacturer's serious about digital transformation, which I view as the strategy and the journey to attempt to reach that ideal State of Industry. 4.4.0 if you describe it as a destination, but if they're serious about it, the organization really has to be ready to change the way work gets done. Technology can connect systems, it can automate steps, it can collect data and it can improve visibility, it can do all sorts of cool things, but it will not create much value if the company keeps the same decision rights. The process gaps, the incentives, the handoffs that created this situation in the first place won't describe as a problem, but our current situation that we're in. So I'd say a few things happen to be true internally for a company. First, I really view as the business outcome has to be specific. We don't need AI or we don't need better data, but we need to reduce downtime, we need to improve on time delivery, we need to speed up quality investigations, we need to standardize production reporting across sites. You need a specific outcome you're trying to achieve. Second, someone has to own the result. I mean, too many digital projects I've seen have an implementation owner but not an outcome owner. They go apply the technology and make sure IT functions, make sure it doesn't disrupt, you know, the current processes or disrupt anything, but they don't make sure it actually transform the business to achieve the outcome that you want. You know, I see system go live all the time and the project is celebrated, but then it just the way things were done before, the way things are done afterwards. Third is the process has to be understood before it's automated. If the current process is inconsistent, if it's poorly defined or is different at every site, the technology will usually expose that problem rather than actually help fix it. And this is where manufacturers, they honestly have to be honest with themselves. I mean every plant wants to be special. Every time I see it they always say, but my plant is different and they have a reason for their process to stay different. But if everything is an Exception. Nothing's going to scale as an organization and you lose your economies of scale if you don't figure that out. I'd say fourth is people doing the work also have to be involved early enough to shape the solution. This is where human centricity comes in. Operators, technicians, supervisors, engineers, plant managers, they all know how things actually work. They know the real bottlenecks and constraints. If they're only brought in at the end for training, the company's already missed a major source of its, of its value. And I'd say lastly is the leadership has to be willing to make decisions. What will be standardized, what will remain local, what metrics matter most? You know, who owns the outcome, like I said earlier, who gets priority when resources are constrained, which old ways of working are no longer acceptable? Digital transformation creates tension if it works, because it forces choices, and leadership cannot delegate those choices to a software implementation team. So my simplest way of saying this is technology creates value when the organization is ready to let it change the work. Without that, companies may still complete digital projects, but they're going to struggle to produce meaningful business results.

Speaker A: Yeah, and it's interesting because governance and risk controls and operating model transformation. I mean, you've described a lot of that tucked under some of your points, but it's not widely advertised as part of a key component or ingredient, to use your word of success in digital transformation, governance. What? So anyway, super, super insightful. I appreciate you sharing. And I do want to talk about the next manufacturing operating model in your current role. Right now at Belden, you're focused more on commercial strategy across digitization, automation, all the things, and physical AI. What do those shifts signal about where manufacturing is headed? If we zoom out and give folks a preview maybe of the next 10

Speaker B: years, say those shifts signal that manufacturing is moving from connected equipment to connected intelligence. For a long time, manufacturers focused on improving individual parts of the operation. You know, automate this process, connect this machine, digitize this workflow, install this system, collect this data, and this work still matters. But the bigger shift now is about how all those individual pieces and projects work together to help the business make better decisions and respond faster to things that come up. Digitization makes the physical world more visible. Automation helps turn that visibility into action. It ot convergence connects what's happening on the plant floor to the broader enterprise. Then you have newer concepts coming out, like physical AI that starts to bring intelligence closer to the real world, where machines, products, people and environments interact. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has talked about the idea that companies will increasingly have two factories, the physical factory that makes the product and the AI factory that produces the intelligence that runs the physical factory. And I think it's a really useful way to look at where manufacturing is headed, because the next competitive advantage may come from how well those two factories work together. But here's the part that I think honestly gets overlooked a lot. It's that the future of manufacturing is not going to be won by whoever has the coolest application of AI. It's going to be won by the companies that make intelligence operational. This means intelligence has to move throughout the entire business. It can't sit in a lab, it can't sit on a dashboard, or it can't be just part of a pilot project. And that requires just a significantly more connected, secure and reliable foundation that manufacturers don't usually have today. It's not because this foundational part is the exciting part, but it's what determines whether all those exciting parts of the new technologies, especially AI, can actually scale and be integrated. So when I look at digitization and automation, itot convergence and physical AI and all the things happening, I do not see separate trends. What I see is manufacturers move towards a new operating model, one where the physical operation and the digital enterprise are much more tightly connected. And the companies that get that right will not just have more data or more automation. They will have. Have a better ability to sense, to decide and to act across the business.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love the way that you frame that. So, any final words for folks, Jeff? How can they find you? How can they learn more about what you do?

Speaker B: Well, I would say the best way is on LinkedIn. I try and make posts many times a week. I try and respond to every comment. So ask your questions, share your thoughts. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. I'd love to hear from you.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, thanks, Jeff.