First the steam engine, second the conveyor belt, third IT, and now, the Internet of Things. Industry futurists are calling it the fourth industrial revolution and it is set to change the face of our world.
McKinsey lists the IoT as one of the top 12 disruptive technologies through 2025 and describes it as: “The physical world becoming a type of information system through sensors and actuators embedded in physical objects and linked through wired and wireless networks via the Internet Protocol.”
On a consumer level, we see IoT growing daily through the plethora of things that are accessible to our smartphone and tablet devices. The hardware on its own is useless without connectivity. However, connected devices can be used to display and control most of the variables in the environment. Standalone hardware devices become vastly more useful when they are connected. So what does this age of pervasive Internet connectivity hold in store for the manufacturing organisation of the future?
According to McKinsey it means, “A world of processes that govern themselves, where smart products can take corrective action to avoid damage and where individual parts are automatically replenished.”
This phenomenon is known as industry 4.0 and its basic tenet is that machines, work pieces and systems will all be connected to create intelligent networks along an entire value chain that will control itself autonomously. The physical devices will, in effect, become an active part of the business processes.
Consider an intelligent machine that monitors all of its operating parameters and schedules its own maintenance when required, perhaps even ordering the spare parts itself. Or, how about a block of aluminium on a shelf in a warehouse that carries its entire timeline with it wherever it goes. Not just its past history, but its future as well. It already knows what machining is required to turn it into the component it is destined to become in the system it will help to drive in a factory of the future. Probably, it also knows what type of tooling is required for its eventual transformation.
In a recent McKinsey interview Robert Bosch executive, Siegfried Dais, described it like this: “The concept of device-to-process allows us to merge information and material flow into one where material and information become inextricably linked to each another. In an extreme vision, the unfinished material already knows for which customer it is intended and carries with it all the information about where and when it will be processed. Once the material is in the machine, the material itself records any deviations from the standard process, determines when it is ‘done’ and knows how to get to its end customer. The device or physical thing becomes a part of the process and initiates every following step by itself.”
Dais goes on to pose an interesting question: “If the product ‘knows’ about all process steps, and machines work through components on order. Does it even matter who owns the machines?”
As an analogy consider the cloud computing industry where IT companies sell data storage capacity on servers located all over the world. The same is about to happen in the manufacturing industry, the only difference being that it is production capacity that will be on offer, and it will be machines that are located all over the world.
In an industry 4.0 world, the trend will be to separate the processes of design and production and the enablers will be cloud computing and ubiquitous connectivity. To read more about the connectivity enabler and industrial Ethernet’s relentless downward march into the automation hierarchy, check out 'Ethernet and wireless technologies enable manufacturing Internet of Things'.
It seems that the fourth industrial revolution is upon us, Ethernet and industrial wireless will feed the beast.
Steven Meyer
Editor: SA Instrumentation & Control
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