What is industry 4.0? All you need to know

What is industry 4.0? All you need to know

What is industry 4.0?

There is no doubt that technology plays an important role in our daily lives, but the increasingly connected culture in which we live also has an impact on the world of industry.

Welcome to Industry 4.0, the name given to the growing combination of traditional industrial and industrial platforms and practices with the latest smart technologies.

This mainly refers to the use of large-scale implementations of M2M and Internet of Things (IoT) to offer greater automation, improved communication and monitoring, as well as intelligent machines capable of analyzing and analyzing diagnosing problems without human intervention

Industry 4.0 is already discovering that factories are becoming more automated and self-controlled as internal machines can analyze and communicate with each other. This frees up your human collaborators, providing companies with a much smoother process that leaves employees open to other tasks.

Industry 4.0 - the latest news

24/07 - Industry 4.0: for smarter operations - Understanding the real applications of IIoT data capture...

13/05 - Don't forget human contact in Industry 4.0 - Constant customer experiences that combine technology and human contact...

04/04 - Main security problems in industry 4.0 - Delays of the manufacturing sector in cybersecurity ...

29/03 - Why mobile devices are at the heart of industry 4.0 - Industry 4.0 or IIoT will change all sectors and mobile devices will play an important role...

22/03 - IoT Security Spending to Reach €1bn by 2018 - Gartner figures suggest that increased threat awareness increases spending...

10/03 - Forget smart refrigerators: the internet of industrial objects is the real revolution: industry 4.0 is already there and makes big differences...

25/02 - Industry 4.0: an industrial evolution instead of a revolution - The connected and intelligent factories of the future will pave the way for a new generation of industries...

20/02 - UK companies not ready for Industry 4.0 - In the UK, manufacturing has done little to embrace automation and other digital technologies. .

30/10/2018 - The 'fourth industrial revolution' could unlock billions for the UK - Adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies could be key to major new benefits, according to the report.

Why Industry 4.0? What happened to industry 2.0 and 3.0?

Industry 4.0 is not a new technology or a business ideal, but a reorganized approach inspired by new advancements to achieve results impossible 10 years ago.

It is also known as the "fourth industrial revolution", but what does it mean exactly?

The first industrial revolution saw Britain move from agriculture to industrial production in the 1850th century. The second runs from the XNUMXs to World War I and begins with the introduction of steel, culminating in the early electrification of factories and the early stages of mass production. Finally, the Third Industrial Revolution refers to the transition from analog, mechanical, and electronic technology to digital technology from the late XNUMXs to the late XNUMXs.

The fourth is the evolution towards digitization. Industry 4.0 uses the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems, such as sensors, to collect large amounts of data that can be used by manufacturers and producers to analyze and improve their work.

Recent advances in big data and analytics platforms allow systems to traverse large data sets and produce information that can be exploited quickly.

Smart factories, which will be at the heart of Industry 4.0, will integrate information and communication technologies for an evolution of the supply chain and the production line that brings a much higher level of automation and scanning. This means that machines use automatic optimization, automatic configuration and even artificial intelligence to perform complex tasks in order to optimize costs and improve the quality of goods and services.

Who started Industry 4.0?

Industry 4.0 is different in that it does not come from a single company, but from the government. A 2013 German government memorandum, widely recognized as one of the first times "Industry 4.0" is mentioned.

The state-of-the-art strategy document outlined a plan to computerize manufacturing almost entirely without involving any human intervention. The idea really made headlines when Chancellor Angela Merkel enthusiastically spoke of the concept in January 2015 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, calling "Industry 4.0" the means to "quickly deal with the merger of the online world." and the world of industrial production ""

To date, the German government has invested around € 200 million (about £ 146 million, US $ 216 million or Australian $ 278 million) to promote research in universities, companies and governments. . Germany is not the only country where progress has been made.

The United States has the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC), a nonprofit organization comprised of manufacturers, suppliers, technology companies, government agencies, universities, and labs, all with the goal of changing the thinking behind Industry 4.0.

Its objective is to build an open and intelligent manufacturing platform for industrial network information applications. The hope is that this will ultimately enable manufacturing companies of all sizes to gain easy and affordable access to modeling and analysis technologies that can be customized to meet their needs.

How much is Industry 4.0 worth?

Anything related to the Internet of Things or further automation pays off. Industry 4.0 is no different, the analysis values ​​the technology around the idea as practically infinite.

Recent figures from KPMG have estimated that the market value of Industry 4.0 components would exceed $ 4 trillion by 2020.

This figure is higher than the expected value of the Internet of Things (IoT) market, which, according to Gartner, will reach almost € 3,700 billion by 2020.

Companies around the world are believed to be able to take advantage of Industry 4.0, a recent government report stating that the use of this advanced technology could benefit the country's manufacturing sector by approximately € 445 billion. about 175,000 jobs.

This is due in large part to the thirst for greater productivity and cost savings through the use of real-time data. It may also be another area where future technologies, such as 5G, will have an effect and ensure that things "buzz" with optimal efficiency.

Regardless of cost, the value of Industry 4.0 comes from improving productivity and eliminating inefficiency at all levels, making it one of the most precious ideas of our time.