Industry 4.0

solutions

23 May

Michael Kasteel - ISW Industrial Solutions Practice Lead

The internet and IT are full of buzzwords and catchy market slogans and one that has been used a lot in recent times is industry 4.0. If you’re confused I’m not surprised, I know I never heard of Industry 3.0! So where did 4.0 come from?? More and more the catch-cry used to draw your attention to anything is becoming increasingly removed from the technology and solutions that are making our lives easier on a day to day basis, so long as it sounds cool, who cares right?

So what is Industry 4.0?

To understand we need to take a look at a bit of history to get a better understanding. As a society, we continually strive to progress and improve. Significant step changes have taken place in our evolution as a society. Industry 4.0 simply refers to the 4th industrial revolution.

So what was the first three versions??

The first Industrial revolution (mechanisation) harnessed the power of machines to improve efficiency and output. Predominantly this was driven by coal and steam power which were harnesses to increase productivity.
The second industrial revolution saw the power shift from coal/steam to oil and electricity. The Internal combustion engine made mechanisation easier and more powerful. Electricity also became easier to produce, distribute and consume providing more flexibility in how to leverage energy to improve outputs and efficiencies.
The third industrial evolution industrial revolution is where smarts and ICT start to come into the picture. Improvements in communication and the introduction of computers allow for more complex control systems such as robotics and increased automation on production lines.

The fourth industrial revolution is more reliant on ICT and is predominantly data-driven. We know from our own day to day experience the modern world is defined by the vast quantities of data we increasingly produce. You have probably heard of the internet of things, big data and Artificial Intelligence. These are a part of the toolsets that are driving the 4th industrial revolution. In short, you can monitor almost anything (IoT) and analyse this by combining it with your existing data (big data) you can analyse massive quantities of data in real-time; more importantly, if you can do this automatically with the smarts of a neural network (AI) that can provide instant feedback and never sleeps. Once you achieve this you have increased quality and output. These improvements are also being applied to maintenance as well as production meaning improvements in outputs through less unexpected downtime, resulting in lower costs allowing you to remain competitive.

Each revolution has taken less time to achieve. Will there be a 5th Revolution? What will it be and when will it happen? Some see industry 5.0 as the personalisation of the data and increasing interfaces between people and machines and improvements in AI. This is potentially more of a societal shift than an industrial one. In reality, I see this as more of the next step based on a data-driven society and more akin to Industry 4.1 in real-world terms.

So how does this help you?

ISW has skill across all of these spheres and can assist you to move toward this now-proven model. IoT can monitor your resources, and Maximo can drive your IoT fed maintenance practices. Products like Informatica can integrate disparate data sources and provide a data warehouse or data lake that can be analysed by AI which we also provide a mechanism to increase efficiency and outputs.

Talk to us today about how we can help you on your journey!