How important are soft facts?

Gut feeling with future decisions

SPANGLER – the Plus of Dialog.

Soft facts with future decisions

Is the amount of money the key factor when it comes to decisions about investment or are factors which cannot be measured also important? Our colleague Rainer Meier talked about this issue during an online meeting of the federation of the Bavarian metal and electrical industry. The group of leaders of research and development met virtually to discuss the topic “Adaptive Worker Assistance” as well as “Flexibilisation of production”.

The subject was the improvement of production processes in order to improve the value chain and the economic feasibility. The focus was on the issues digitalisation, data-driven processes optimisation as well as automation supported by robots. Such improvement measures, however, always entail huge investment which is an immense obstacle especially for small and medium-sized companies. Our colleague has dealt with the question of costs from a perspective whether there are also non-monetary factors which justify the acquisition of such systems. His approach was based on the fact that with electronical process optimisation risky or difficult tasks are taken over by machines or can be controlled digitally. Thus, the quality of the products is continuously increased and the production process is taking place with less interruptions. Furthermore, experience shows that working at modern and digitalised working places is an incentive and highly motivating for employees.

Whether these arguments are sufficient in order to justify the investment of a digital process optimisation, every enterprise ultimately has to decide on its own. Observing the so-called soft facts was in any case a welcome change of perspective and reason for a lively discussion.