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Industry 4.0 is the phrase of the hour in the manufacturing industry. This technology will drastically change production and is expected to trigger a deep and multifaceted industrial structural change in the near future. Stephan Mang, a consultant at Pollen Consulting Group, reflects on how Industry 4.0 will help develop the factory of the future and encourage cooperative innovation.
Digitization, the connection between the machine and the Internet, is an extremely important milestone. The previous separation between the “real” world of (manufacturing) machines and the “virtual” world of the Internet is increasingly blurred. Today, digital and information technologies pervade classic industrial production and manufacturing technologies. In the future, the physical and digital worlds will increasingly integrate and merge into complex cyber-physical systems.
The next factory will be a human and robot friendly factory. It becomes a place of knowledge and creation of knowledge. Therefore, the factory is evolving into a communication platform for operations. Increasingly advanced automation increases flexibility and makes people sovereign players again.
The high degree of automation of the factory of the future will mean that people will be even more supported by machines in production in monotonous or physically demanding activities. Requirements will move more into the areas of management, planning, maintenance and process control – imagine a factory with no people inside and a NASA-like control center.
The tasks of traditional knowledge and production work will converge and offer new opportunities, but also require a lot of creativity and new skill profiles. The factory becomes a place of learning that shows knowledge in its application and at the same time constantly challenges it anew. The factory becomes a place of learning for employees and requires upskilling of the workforce to work with the new technology. Achieving this final state will take time and is not expected to be a revolution per se, but rather an evolution over time.
Flexible production technologies bring customer orders and production closer together. In addition to carrying out in-house work orders and procedures, there is increasing communication of the factory outside. In the consumer goods sector, hierarchical supply chains are being replaced by global production networks that need to be coordinated in time. The factory is moving from a command receiver to a place of collaboration with suppliers and customers. In addition to the classic goals of increasing productivity and minimizing costs, there is flexible production and cooperative innovation.
Another factory allows for smarter layouts and flows, a high degree of factory flexibility for production equipment, including their modifications and additions. Material flows are organized on mobile transport units. Movement that is repetitive and simple is where to look for automation opportunities.
Robots are becoming cheaper and more flexible in their applications. In addition, industrial robots acquire skills that have so far been developed for the service sector, for example for communication or for the automotive industry.. Mobility is also increasing, allowing robots to accompany industrial champions and help them with serious and dangerous tasks. Robots are much more flexible as they can be reprogrammed and given a new purpose, whereas a case packer can only pack boxes.
As a strategic principle, we should adopt the evolutionary process of change, and we can consider technological advances such as visual and electronic bulletin boards, glasses that overlay the machine for engineers during preventive maintenance or for operators during set-up and readjustment. Another example of digitization is the implementation of radio frequency identification (RFID) or smart tags to track materials and find out where the next ingredients are.
A more sustainable factory
The era of the air-polluting, noisy and energy-guzzling factory is a thing of the past. Another factory supplies itself. It is determined by the sustainable use of resources and energy. The use of wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and biomass production is key: the factory is also a power plant, supplying excess energy to the city grid and acting as a buffer in times of high energy. These measures are complemented by closed cycles of water management.
“Industry 4.0 will drastically change manufacturing and drive a deep and multifaceted industrial structural change in the near future.”
– Stephan Mang, Pollen Consulting Group
Merely waiting and doing nothing is not adequate; accepting established and/or incorrect procedures is also out of the question. In many cases, strengthening and revitalizing the manufacturing base is the best response to unstoppable new technologies and industry disruptors. Fundamentally, we need more technology, not less, if we are to maintain the future viability of our manufacturing footprint in Australia.
In the future, the complex digitization of production will enable all factors important to production (human production, machines, workpieces, factories, suppliers and customers, products and logistics) to actively participate in the production process and communicate with each other via smart networks. . Thanks to this, the Internet takes on a new dimension, and industrial production without the use of the Internet is no longer conceivable. The question of which side will be “in the lead” in this connection of the machine and the grate is far from being resolved. The change has only just begun.
This article was previously published in “It’s not a revolution – it’s an evolutionWhite Paper by Pollen Consulting Groupan Australian consulting firm specializing in the FMCG sector.
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