Shaping Industry 4.0 By Empowering The Smart Factory

The goal of Industry 4.0 is to create autonomous production in which people, machines, systems, and products communicate with each other independently. The result are intelligent value chains and product life cycles that begin with development, continue through manufacturing, assembly, product delivery and maintenance, and finally end with recycling. In this way, not only production is controlled, but also the entire value chain, from suppliers and producers to customers.

The advantages are obvious, but what makes a factory smart?

The smart factory brings a lot of benefits: they can achieve greater productivity and growth, ensure high quality and reduce the risk of human error, provide the right data for analysis and optimization purposes, minimize downtime and disruptions through predictive maintenance, safeguard the supply chains from disruptions, offer customized products, meet sustainability commitments, and to ultimately become more competitive.

For the smart factory to function, huge amounts of data are collected, transmitted, analyzed, and processed in all areas of production.

1. Smart usage of data: During production, huge amounts of data are collected. It is essential to collect, analyze, understand, and deploy this massive amount of data effectively and securely.
2. Ubiquitous, reliable connections: The reliable and secured connectivity of people, machines, and “things” in physical and virtual domains via wired and wireless technologies is the heartbeat of every smart factory, allowing high-speed communication for complex automation.
3. Autonomous production: Together with artificial intelligence and machine learning, smartness helps reduce the need for human intervention, for example when production conditions change.
4. Transparent and flexible supply chains: Real-time and end-to-end visibility, shared with all participants of the supply chain, enable smart and resilient supply chains. Issues can be anticipated at an early stage and therefore prevented before they occur.
5. Sustainability: Rising energy demand while optimizing energy efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions can be achieved by reliable data, collected by sensors. Interpreted correctly, they can lead to energy savings by uncovering inefficient production flow, optimizing production and logistics planning, and anticipating maintenance needs. In addition, energy-efficient semiconductor components also contribute to the savings.