Industry 4.0: Highly flexible, productive and resource-efficient

By OEM Update Editorial June 11, 2018 6:04 pm IST

S.M. Jacob, General Manager – Sales, Schmalz India Pvt Ltd explains few benefits of Industry 4.0, IIoT adoption drivers and further company’s preparedness in the area of IIoT.

Industry 4.0: the fourth industrial revolution
The “fourth industrial revolution” describes the transition of production towards the intelligent factory. The increased combination of production and IT processes makes this flexible, efficient and sustainable. In the future, products will plan, control and optimise their own production process without human intervention. Humans will continue to dictate the pace, but with the best possible support in their work.

Benefits of Industry 4.0 are:
Production becomes highly flexible, highly productive and resource-efficient.
• Individualisation (batch size of 1) under efficient high volume production conditions.
• The increasing complexity of production and processes becomes manageable.
• Autonomous production units organise themselves on and “ad hoc” basis – the product determines its own production process.

Previously: The hierarchical structure of class automation pyramids is becoming more and more obsolete.

Today and in the future: An intelligent vacuum ejector supplies valuable data for users. Devices and services communicate with each other in the cloud and organise themselves.

IIoT adoption drivers
From hand dryers to aircraft engines, farmyards to office blocks, there has been a wide range of innovative uses of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to date. Similarly, rising interest from pharmaceutical companies, a sector which is becoming far more competitive, even for well-established mainstream products.

As such, businesses are looking at how they can achieve greater efficiencies from a production line. With the mounting importance of traceability, food and beverage is another sector we are seeing increasing interest from.

Another good scope is in the automobile industry where the costs can be reduced due improved performance and benefited immensely due to predictive maintenance.

Schmalz’s preparedness in the area of IIoT
The vacuum specialist from Schmalz left the theoretical discussions behind some time ago, and has been supplying products that provide a whole range of useful data in the field for a number of years now. This has allowed them to satisfy one of the key requirements in making Industry 4.0 a reality.

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