Environmental issues, structural demographic changes, and resource scarcity are affecting us globally. At the same time, competition is increasing, continuously forcing companies to become ever more efficient and putting increased pressure on high-cost regions like Europe. Industrie 4.0 and the digitalisation of production can play a key role in providing answers to these challenges. By defining a tailored strategy for digitalisation and embracing advanced technologies that are already available today, the fibre industry can reap the benefits of WORLD PULP&PAPER 75 By Jürgen Mielke, Head of Portfolio Management and Innovation, Siemens Fibre Industry 4.0: Scenarios for the Digital Future digitalisation – from the resolution of production challenges, to improved process quality and flexibility, to the exploitation of new business opportunities. The age of digitalisation not only enables new and significantly more variable production processes, some of which are autonomous, it also allows for complex simulations and remote maintenance services. Most of the challenges that digitalisation helps address are not new to the fibre industry. Saving resources and improving production quality, reliability, and efficiency have always been at the top of the list for producers. But with recent developments in digital technologies, new solutions are now available that are, in comparison, relatively easy to adapt and can be implemented without the massive capital and labor expenses that were previously necessary. For example, in the past, tackling the issue of web breaks in papermaking required a multiyear project with huge investments in order to monitor and analyse the multiple parameters that impact web behavior and then optimise process properties. By defining a tailored strategy… and embracing advanced technologies that are already available today, the fibre industry can reap the benefits of digitalisation Figure 1. Siemens Digital Enterprise Platform. BENEFITS OF DIGITALISATION