New-Tech Europe Magazine | April 2017

Industry 4.0 Let’s look at the big picture

Molly Connell, TradeMachines

The 4th Industrial Revolution is a highly discussed topic and it gained even more attention when it became the focus of discussions at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in 2016. Industry 4.0 has brought and continues to bring fundamental changes to manufacturing, which some welcome, some fear. Those who welcome it see the potential in the technical advancements which Industry 4.0 holds. The factories which have been improved with the latest technology are called smart factories. The components of these factories are connected and together they create a web of information and production, the so-called Industrial Internet of Things. A perfect example is the Siemens (IW 1000/34) Electronic

Works facility in Amberg, Germany. The 108,000-square-foot high-tech facility is adequate for a built-to- order process involving more than 1.6 billion components. An advanced factory like this improves manufacturing processes in numerous ways compared to traditional factories. In a summary from RobotWorx, decreased production costs by shorter cycle times (among others) and improved quality and reliability are named first. They also emphasize the advantage of better floor space utilization which is possible by decreasing a footprint of a work area. By reducing the factor of human mistakes one can calculate with reduced waste as well. It is also important to highlight the increase of safety since human

workers are moved to supervisory roles where they no longer have to perform dangerous applications in hazardous settings. And last but not lease adaptability is also a key factor for success and robots and AI are suitable for performing a variety of applications. It is also very important to emphasize that having a smart factory has became affordable: there are agile factory robots for as little as $25,000 already, which is financially equivalent to paying a full-time human worker $4 an hour over the life of the machine. As a proof of the previously mentioned advantages, the Siemens Work facility only records about 15 defects per million and has shown a 99% reliability rate and 100%

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