As the preferred partner for window and door automation, Somfy is committed to inspiring new and better ways of living for all. Better ways of producing, consuming, and housing that we must imagine together around the world in order to inhabit our planet in a more virtuous and permanent way. Acting for better ways of living means fostering the alliance of a sustainable economic model with environmental protection and self-fulfillment for everyone. As a French, family-owned, and independent group, in continuous growth since our creation, we have been world leaders for 50 years and pioneers in home automation. We are present in 59 countries, with eight production sites and 17 R&D centers.

Industry 4.0 has taken manufacturing to the next level, handing processes over to technology, smart machines, and artificial intelligence (AI). These transformations often happen in isolation, creating siloed environments that miss the bigger purpose of digitalization. But when a company connects data among people, programs, and processes, the sum creates a digital factory. A digital factory represents far more than the physical process of making things: It's a concept in which the factory itself figures into the equation. The goal of a digital factory is to optimize manufacturing processes and the environment that houses them. Despite the acceleration of digital transformation, the World Economic Forum found that 62% (PDF, p. 10) of manufacturing companies have digitized only one product line, which means they've gained a fraction of the data that's possible with Industry 4.0.

Total SA plans to start a digital factory in the coming weeks to tap artificial intelligence in a bid to save hundreds of millions of dollars on exploration and production projects, according to an executive. The use of artificial intelligence to screen geological data will help identify new prospects, and shorten the time to acquire licenses, drill and make discoveries, Arnaud Breuillac, head of E&P, said at a conference organized by IFP Energies Nouvelles in Paris on Friday. It will also help optimize the use of equipment and reduce maintenance costs, he said. The digital factory will employ between 200 and 300 engineers and build on successful North Sea pilot projects, Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne said at the same event. It will also be a way to attract "young talent" to the industry.

The industrial world has been in the throes of digitization for well over a decade. Primarily through enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution systems (MES), critical planning, scheduling, warehousing, inventory management, and logistics processes have been automated and simplified. But these gains have been restricted to technology silos, supporting separate functions of the factory rather than improving the performance of the plant -- and its extended supply chain -- in a broader way. Those days may finally be in the past, as manufacturers now have a golden opportunity to take advantage of digitization's promised outsized benefits. The advent of complex smart sensors, artificial intelligence, big data pools, and robotics, combined with the vast connections of the cloud, is heralding a new era for manufacturers, marked by totally integrated factories that can rapidly tailor products to individual customer needs and respond instantly to shifting demands and trends.

Even though Finland-based unloaded its mobile handset business on in 2014, it remains the second-largest mobile equipment manufacturer in the world after Sweden-based . The company has about 100,000 employees after its acquisition of in 2016. Microsoft shuttered the handset business a scant two years after the company acquired it, freeing up hundreds of skilled technical resources, especially in Oulu, as I discussed in my last article. In spite of these disruptions, Nokia still employs over 2,000 people in this small city near the Arctic Circle. In fact, the company still operates a factory there, manufacturing mobile base stations for telco service providers.