Baking yeast in the kitchen and Industry 4.0

The principles of industry 4.0 between technology, information and fear of the new

I remember when in the seventies, a well-known brand of baking powder distributed its recipe book – a few A5 format pages on coated paper, colored and full of images – with an introduction to the product, its use in the recommended doses, and a note for each footer, highlighting the difference between the dough made using the hand whisk and the one with the mixer or electric mixer: in the latter case, special precautions were recommended in the use of yeast and its uniform distribution in the dough , if you wanted to get a discreet and successful homemade product. Needless to underline how many housewives and mothers have begun to experiment in the kitchen with the electric hand mixer which was beginning to spread at that time, allowing more and more people to obtain previously unhoped-for results.

The evolution of the simple electric hand mixer has led to having professional equipment at an ever lower cost, increasing its diffusion and at the same time its knowledge and use by wider sections of the population. The yeast has remained the same, indeed improved and diversified in its uses, which has led to a request for greater knowledge and in-depth study of leavening and employment techniques. Assuming that the hand mixer did its job, we focused on the processes and their continuous improvement, doing research on yeast, generating "value".

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Industry 4.0

Maintaining the analogy, the various Industry 4.0 programs foreseen in the USA, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy etc. they are not very different from the introduction of the electric hand mixer: the singularity of the technology is its introduction and evolution at a much faster pace than one can understand the actual uses. This is highly positive in terms of cost reduction, jobs, taxation, evolutions in the world of production, logistics and distribution, marketing and project management, advantages that are immediately perceptible as widely treated. The discussions that arise around the various applications of enabling technologies concern exclusively "technical" aspects and not of "value" brought, which is equivalent to saying that infrastructure is privileged over knowledge. The most immediate and easy objection is that there is also knowledge in the infrastructure, to plan and implement it; hence, the falsely logical extension that technology is sufficient to resolve any and all obstacles, including legislative ones. It is legitimate to think so, if we forget that the rules only describe procedures, not processes, even labeling those who hold opposing positions as new Luddites if they legitimately fear the fear of staying out of it and not having time to adapt: ​​a false negative.

This false negative is an equally false fear deriving from the lack of perception of the "value" that technology brings to processes. This value arises not only from the mastery of the technical tool itself, but also from knowing how to draw the maximum possible utility, something connected to the facilitation in terms of costs, taxation or reduction of personnel: the macroscopic error consists in neglecting the first part and its relationship with the last one, which however is treated exclusively. To derive the maximum possible utility, processes, productive or not, must be in control to ensure the ability to generate money continuously; vice versa, both technological capacity and know-how and money are dispersed: to paraphrase a well-known advertisement, "technology becomes nothing without control".

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The importance of training

For this, in addition to the infrastructure, training is also needed as an infrastructure of knowledge, i.e. the instruction booklet, the paradigm shift to switch from the whisk to the mixer or electric hand mixer: new systems of technology and knowledge cannot be faced with obsolete metrics. This is what the Governments realized after the allocations in favor of companies whose employment rate was low, both due to the time required for the propagation of the connected tax maneuver - about six months on average - and due to the lack of transposition of the legislation at operational levels, a major obstacle.

It can be deduced that technology is necessary but not sufficient, and that the contribution of value consists in overcoming obsolete logics, of the "it has always been done this way": these are the fundamental paradigms, the effective contribution of its utility to the company. Rethinking the company in a digital key is a challenge because it changes the decision-making process, in senior, middle and operational management, moving from a local logic to a systemic one.

A bit like making a dessert by following the recipe step by step or after having read it all and prepared the ingredients, knowing full well whether a whisk, mixer or beater is convenient and which type of oven.

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