Hello everyone :)

Today I want to write a bit about Industry 4.0 and give you a little overview what it is about.

Industry 4.0

In a "normal company", people interact with other people, interact with machines and use computers to get their work done. With Industry 4.0, the next revolution in the industry could be achieved.

After steam power, mass production and computers, the 4th. revolution is going to introduce intelligent, connected systems, creating a self-organised network: the smart-factory. In a smart factory, cyber-physical systems monitor process in the factory and can make decentralized decisisons, to complete task as automatic as possible.

Which principles will it bring to the industry?

As for now, we already work together with robots and computers and have automatic machines (no your coffe machine in your office doesn't count ;D)

Industry 4.0 will provide

Interoperability, so machines, devices, sensors, and people are connected and communicating with each other (e.g. the Internet of Things)

Information transparency. Systems are creating a virtual copy of the physical world through sensor data to contextualize information. 

Technical assistance will be helping humans, because the system will support workers at making decisions and solving problems and secondly recognising task, which are too difficult or dangerous for workers sot hey do them instead. 

Decentralized decision contributes to the ability of cyber physical systems to make their own decisions and work as autonoumously as possible.

understanding the idea of  a smart factory

Your own industry 4.0 yogurt

A project of german universities gives you the opportunity, to order your own customized yogurt in germany. The order is getting processed by so-called "agents". Buying agents receive the order, coordination agents choose which production agent has to choose which machine produces the yogurt... you can imagine how it goes on. Every glas jar has it's own RFID-chip and communicates with the sourrounding. The devices communicate through a cloud, where a copy of them exist that can for example tell the coordination agent: 

(robot voice activated ;D)" I am still producing, it can't get new task right now" (robot voice deactivated).

Lets keep talking about yogurt...

People nowadays want to get individual products for a price of a mass product. The unicum people want, can be achieved in the smart factory- 

by letting agents communicate and telling the buying agent to order certain toppings, ingredients and comparing the best prices and the shortest delivery times, you get our own cheap yogurt like you wanted to have it. After the yogurt is finished for the delivery, transport agents tell the coordination agents about their distance to the product and they pick the one with the smallest distance to the product ->efficiency

Chances

High increase of production rates can be achieved and cheap individualised products can be made. More efficeny in factorys can reduce costs and emissions. New jobs will appear in robotic, chip technlogy, repairing of systems and other areas.

People get a better work-life balance, becaus they can work from home and old workers can get help from robots. It also leads to more diversity in working tasks.

Risks

People can lose their jobs because they get replaced from machine and cyber attacks may occur to be a problem. Implementing the new technlogies too fast can be negative for the companys and a shortage of qualified technical workers could be an issue in the future.

Conclusion

I'm fascinated about the new possibiltys we get resulting from this new kind of industry. I hope there will be a good balance between implementing it and research it enough to prevent job losses or problems from attacks from the internet. I think it will be a very important topic in the next few years and projects doing studys on industry 4.0 give the launch for it.

I hope you enjoyed the post 

Stay positive :)

Sources

Text

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_4.0

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2016/06/20/what-everyone-must-know-about-industry-4-0/#437d974a795f

http://www.zeit.de/zeit-wissen/2016/01/industrie-4-0-kuenstliche-intelligenz-maschinen

Pictures

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Industry_4.0.png

http://blog.ebv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Fotolia_94832214_Subscription_Yearly_M.jpg

https://wtop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/getty_042216_yogurt.jpg