Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 Jared Brunette, Stephen Rakus Robert Morris University ENGR1010-B 4 December 2019 Manufacturing techniques have remained relatively static over the last 50 or so years. We have seen the use of more robots and complex computing in manufacturing but more often than not there are still mostly humans providing the labor, but that could all change in the near future. The revolution of industry 4.0 is becoming more popular with manufacturers and is poised to be the movement of the future. Industry 4.0 is, as could be inferred, is “the fourth revolution that has occurred in manufacturing” (Marr, 2018). Now what does industry 4.0 bring to the table? Well in many ways it is similar to the third industry movement where computer operation became an industry standard, but builds on that with a new and exciting twist. We have already had robots and computers working together in manufacturing, but humans were always the ones making the decisions, until now that is. In industry 4.0 the plan is to have “...computers are connected and communicate with one another to ultimately make decisions without human involvement” (Marr, 2018). To some it may sound like robots finally starting to take over, but to manufacturers it sounds more like a way to save a significant amount of money. In the near future, factories could be running completely independently from humans, aside from initial set-up, maintenance, and materials supplying. Along with this, it is expected that industry will become far more efficient by gathering data for computer engineers to use to fully optimize the process (Marr, 2018). This optimization not only stretches to processes inside the manufacturing plant, but also encompasses outside aspects like supply chain optimization. So, what exactly are the benefits of adopting industry 4.0? To put it simply, it is the optimization previously stated, but there are benefits provided beyond that. The biggest one by far is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions during manufacturing. As an example, industry 4.0 will bring forth the concept of the “Dark Factory”. As the name implies, there are no lights on in a dark factory, nor is there any climate control besides the existence of the factory building, and they are not missed by the employees because the majority of the time humans do not work there; just robots. Thanks to this, there can be very significant power savings and reduction of emissions. In the case of industry 4.0, there are too many people trying to get involved in its introduction to name. What it comes down to is that it is an entire industry revolution, and no one or two companies are the most involved. What I can state are the countries that are becoming the most heavily involved, which are China and Germany (Kruger, 2019). China is very involved with the revolution due to the abundance of manufacturing that occurs there currently. Fully utilizing industry 4.0 could massively stimulate their economy, and potentially make them the technical superpower of manufacturing. As for Germany’s involvement, they are quite interested in all of the above aspects, but are more interested in the ecologically friendly applications than China is. Thus far, we have been talking about industry 4.0 as though it is just in the semi-near future, but the technology exists already and is being used in an early form. For instance, Changying Precision Technology Company in China has used many of the industry 4.0 practices to streamline their mobile phone factory (Carr, 2017). The factory went from employing 650 workers to employing just 60 for general overseeing and maintenance of the automated equipment (Carr, 2017). The process is far from perfect still, and faces many issues with security, as well as ethical pushback, but it is something available today if a manufacturer has the money to implement it. The emergence of industry 4.0 will lead to a boom in engineering jobs in the near future, but is most likely to affect industrial, computer, and manufacturing engineers. To speak more for the manufacturing engineer effect, since it is the major of both of us writing this paper, it probably stands to gain the most out of the three mentioned. To start, these futuristic manufacturing plants will need to be designed, which just so happens to be a specialty of a manufacturing engineer. In addition to this, there will be robots to be designed and maintained, which is also one of the key jobs of a manufacturing engineer. In the future employment structure, it is likely that industrial engineers will manage plant logistics, and computer and manufacturing engineers will handle day-to-day plant operations. Since it is very likely that the abundance of manufacturing plants will go up dramatically with the introduction of industry 4.0, the job market for such roles will absolutely increase. The downside for graduates in the near future is the job market will become much more competitive, and students in our generation are perfectly poised to get a chance to be the initial innovators of an entirely new way of manufacturing we can call our own, but gaining a competitive skill set is a must. Industry 4.0 possess some real economic, ethical, and environmental challenges for us today and in the very near future. Companies and their industrial process will have to adapt to the rapid changes that follow with the digital transformation. Some studies have already been conducted on Swiss manufacturing companies to determine problems that we might face in the very near future with the transformation. (Deliotte,2015) One situation that companies will face is an increase in competitiveness among companies. Industry 4.0 provides companies new opportunities to interact with their customers on a more personal basis. (Deliotte, 2015) For example customers could send data straight to the machinery, and catered exactly how the customer wanted it. There are so many emerging studies being conducted on industry 4.0 and because it’s still relatively new. Many of the problems have been undiscovered. Many companies are in support of the new revolution, as they have already implemented some form of IT infrastructure for it. The few companies that do not see industry 4.0 as a successful change don’t have a sufficient IT infrastructure to support this scale of change. If the digital transformation wants to prosper throughout the world then business of all calibers will need to invest in a more suitable IT infrastructure. (Deliotte,2015) The technical issues overlap with many of the known problems associated with new revolution. Fears that heighten cyber-attacks could affect a company’s performance and production. Companies want to implement “two speed” data architecture that will increase the speed at which data is transferred from one system to another. (Baur, 2015) This new method would do two things. First, it will help companies deploy new technologies that will run at the needed data speeds. Second, it will help preserve mission essential applications.(Baur, 2015) Although Industry 4.0 is in its early stages of development, it is becoming more popular with every new day. Experts are starting to advise manufacturers on the best way to start building their own digital organization. A group of 270,000 data scientist from an organization has already helped 20 Fortune 500 companies with their most difficult data problems. (Baur, 2015) While there are still some challenges that companies have to overcome in order for industry 4.0 to work. Many in fact do believe that this is the way of our future. Sources Marr, B. (2018, sept 2nd). What is Industry 4.0? Here's A Super Easy Explanation For Anyone.https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/09/02/what-is-industry-4-0-heres-a-super-easy-explanation-for-anyone/#2e45479788a6 Schumacher, A. (2018, July).Roadmapping towards industrial digitalization based on an Industry 4.0 maturity model for manufacturing enterprises. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212827119302276 Cornelius Baur and Dominik Wee (2015, June) Manufacturing’s Next act https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/manufacturings-next-act# Kruger, J. (2019, March 7th). Will Industry 4.0 Create the Dark Factory? https://metrology.news/will-industry-4-0-create-the-dark-factory/ Carr, M. (2019, march 2nd). How Dark Factories Are Changing Manufacturing (and How to Profit). https://investmentu.com/dark-factories-changing-manufacturing-profit/ Deliotte (2015, June) Deliotte. Industry 4.0 https://www2.deloitte.com/cn/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/industry-4-0-challenges-and-solutions.html