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Now they are squaring up to the technological challenge.
现在，它们正勇敢面对技术挑战。
Mid-sized companies globally are making progress on the internet of things in manufacturing.
在把物联网用于制造业方面，全球各地的中型企业正取得进展。
In Japan, excavator maker Komatsu runs factories that receive data from diggers in use by customers to improve efficiency and reliability.
在日本，挖掘机制造商小松(Komatsu)经营的工厂从客户使用中的挖掘机接收数据，以提高效率和可靠性。
At Swedish industrial group Sandvik, sensor technology is monitoring remote equipment from offshore drill rigs to rock crushing machines.
瑞典工业集团山特维克(Sandvik)使用传感器技术监测从海上钻机到岩石破碎机等远程设备。
But most experts believe German midsized companies, with a history of innovation and decades of experience, are ahead.
但大多数专家相信，拥有创新历史和数十年经验的德国中型企业处于领先地位。
Hermann Simon, a Bonn-based consultant who has studied the Mittelstand for 30 years, says in this group Industrie 4.0 is . . . taken very seriously.
在波恩工作的顾问赫尔曼.西蒙(Hermann Simon)研究德国中小型企业达30年，他表示，这些企业非常严肃地对待……工业4.0。
Ailke Heidemann, of the Stuttgart office of Boston Consulting Group, says Mittelstand companies with backgrounds in mechanical engineering are working urgently to bring on to their payrolls the experts they need in digitisation and data.
波士顿咨询集团(BCG)斯图加特办公室的艾克.海德曼(Ailke Heidemann)表示，拥有机械工程背景的德国中小型企业正加紧招募它们需要的数字化和数据领域专家。
Here are three examples of Mittelstand businesses — each family-owned and more than a century old — approaching a new era for industry.
以下是3个正跨入工业新时代的德国中小型企业的例子——每一个都是家族企业，并拥有超过100年的历史。
Digital farming
数字化农业
At Claas, Mr Kriszun says the company’s 300 software engineers, out of a global workforce of more than 11,000, are its most important employees.
Claas的克里斯尊表示，在该公司全球各地逾1.1万名员工中，300名软件工程师是最重要的员工。
We are seeing many opportunities [in electronics and software] that weren’t available five years ago, he says.
我们看到了很多（电子和软件方面的）机会，5年前这些机会还不存在，他说。
The company has spent EURO2m on developing ways to automatically transmit information via satellite networks from the harvesters operating in fields to farmers or grain experts thousands of kilometres away, bringing to farms the sort of continual remote monitoring that is routine in many factories.
该公司投入200万欧元开发通过卫星网络将信息从田间作业的收割机自动传输到农民或者数千公里以外的谷物专家那里的方法，从而把许多工厂中常见的连续远程监测带到农场。
It has produced an app for smartphones that operators of combine harvesters can use to help control machines or learn to do this better — and even leave them to operate alone.
该公司开发了一款智能手机应用，联合收割机的操作者可以利用这款应用辅助机器控制，或者了解如何更好地操作机器——甚至让这些机器自行运作。
Mr Kriszun points out that the 103-year old company is used to change.
克里斯尊指出，这家有着103年历史的公司已经习惯改变。
We’ve had to adapt a lot, so [in taking up the new digital ideas] we’re not really doing anything that new.
一直以来我们不得不适应很多东西，因此（就接受新的数字化创意而言）我们并没有真正做什么非常新的事情。
