Industry 4.0 programmes often assume a greenfield plant. Most manufacturers GII works with have lines that still earn money, skilled operators, and no appetite for a factory reset.

The practical path is to add connectivity where it improves a known bottleneck: machine status, quality checks, energy use or maintenance. Data then has to reach the people who run the shift, not only a central analytics team.

German engineering standards still apply. Interfaces, documentation and training decide whether a connected line stays connected after the project team leaves.