What is Industry 4.0? What is smart manufacturing? What is Industrial IoT, IIoT?
Smart phones? Smart Cars? Smart TVs? Smart Manufacturing? Smart, smart, smart & smart? If everything will be smart, what will be human being? Well that’s a debate for another day, but today I want to share a small gyan to help understand what exactly is Industry 4.0?
Let me start by answering that it is not a single dimension, but a whole lot of technologies that will be in a position to bring efficiency, better and different ways, of doing things on the manufacturing shop floor!
Before we understand Industry 4.0, it is logical to understand what was 1.0, 2.0 & 3.0, isn’t it? Well let’s see what it was and how it shaped the world.
The First Industrial Revolution or Industry 1.0
For the first time in early 18th century the labor undertaken by people & animals was gradually replaced by using water and steamed powered engines and other machines, to optimize & make production faster & better and hence got scripted the First Industrial Revolution or Industry 1.0, simple isn’t it?
The Second Industrial Revolution or Industry 2.0
Somewhere in the early 19th century, the steam powered efficiency got replaced by use of electricity for manufacturing, and thus started the industrial revolution which made the factories, to produce even faster, more efficiently with less wastage of resources, and the world recognized this as Second Industrial Revolution or Industry 2.0!
The Third Industrial Revolution or Industry 3.0
Somewhere in the 1950s, the manufacturing saw the integration of electronics, computers, digital technology and automation software, which saw lesser dependency on analog and mechanical processes, to manufacture far more efficiently and gave the world the Third Industrial Revolution or Industry 3.0!
The Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0
In the last few decades with the digital technology as the main driver, the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 is shaping the world of manufacturing today and ever evolving. Machine to machine connectivity through internet of things, IoT, availability of real time data, big data analytics and much more has created a very holistic approach in manufacturing. This revolution will connect the physical form with digital and will allow better collaboration and ease of understanding, managing, controlling etc. of processes, partners, products and people!
Let me simplify this further for an overall understanding, some of the things that you will hear often spoken are:
· ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, a business process management tool that can be used to manage information across an organization.
· IoT, Internet of Things, a platform that refers to connections between physical objects like sensors or machines and the Internet.
· IIoT, Industrial Internet of Things, a platform that refers to the connections between people, data, and machines as they relate to manufacturing.
· M2M, machine-to-machine, and refers to the communication that happens between two separate machines through wireless or wired networks.
· Smart factory, a smart factory is one that invests in and leverages Industry 4.0 technology, solutions, and approaches.
· Machine learning, refers to the ability that computers have to learn and improve on their own through artificial intelligence—without being explicitly told or programmed to do so.
By the looks and progress of things, smart factories are the future of things, so just like, smart phones, smart TVs, smart cars et al, smart factories are going to create a large impact on how we live.
We at Axon Networks believe that connected factories produce more with less. Check our specially curated solutions for manufacturing in the post-pandemic era. We partner with Maxbyte Technologies, a leading Industry 4.0 service provider to enable smart connected engineering, manufacturing and after-market. Improve productivity, quality while reducing cost and energy consumption. Implement technology to cope with the pandemic induced restrictions and obligations.
Regards,
Atul Ojha
Co-Founder
Axon Networks LLP