In 2011, German scientists first proposed the concept of Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as a government strategy.
Priorities are given to flexible mass production, including agile product customization, coordination of people, machines, equipment and sensors, information transparency and the ability to make decisions at distributed manufacturing sites.
Driving Industry 4.0 requires new manufacturing processes, technologies, training, and systems. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays a crucial role in connecting these components and enabling decentralized processes and decisions.
Ten years later, companies have made significant progress in automation, intelligence, and innovation in manufacturing, which are evident in the end-to-end workflows of manufacturing.
Let's take a look.
Industrial Internet of Things and Digital Twin Engineering and Product Design
Having a concept for a new product, building the product, and testing how it works are two different things.
Typically, the engineering department releases a product design, which is then reviewed by an independent team of engineers who determine how the product will actually function and request changes. While this iterative design process can improve product quality, modifications can be time-consuming and expensive.
With IIoT virtual digital twins, product designers can now create hypothetical virtual representations to see how products perform in various scenarios. A digital twin program is a computer program that is fed with real data about a physical object or system and then outputs a prediction or simulation of how that object or system will work.
Digital twins are used to improve and modify products. Because digital twins are product simulations, using them can eliminate the time wasted on the production line when defects are discovered, and the repair costs are much higher.
"Real-time data from digital twins allows designers to 'see' in real time how features are being used or ignored, and misuse patterns due to poor document quality," says W. David Stephenson, head of IoT consulting firm Stephenson Strategies. Products can often be digitally updated via software updates, reducing maintenance issues and improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
For example, Tesla achieves this through over-the-air (OTR) software updates.
Automation, real-time visibility of the manufacturing workshop
A central premise of Industry 4.0 is decentralized manufacturing.
From an IT perspective, this means more computing is running remotely at the enterprise's edge, outside of central data centers. Industrial IoT technologies such as sensors, robotics, automation, and video streaming are enabling edge manufacturing.
At the manufacturing level, the focus is on automating manufacturing processes and making those processes visible to improve efficiency and save costs. Especially in repetitive production environments, such as when a box of breakfast cereal or a roll of tissues is repeatedly produced, Industrial IoT robots enable automated assembly lines by faithfully repeating the same operations without the possibility of errors.
This automation can speed up the production process and reduce production costs, but it is important to note that humans must be able to intervene when necessary.
This is the purpose of real-time visibility.
Sensors built into robots and other automated manufacturing equipment can trigger alarms when a specific process or piece of equipment indicates a potential malfunction. Because these alarms predict problems before they occur, proactive maintenance can be performed to prevent failures.
Industrial IoT visibility powered by sensors and video streaming plays a crucial role, as the average downtime cost for repetitive manufacturing is estimated at $6,000 per hour.
The production plants are also equipped with cameras, transmitting video from various points within each plant. A production supervisor, if not on the shop floor, can observe potentially problematic production processes via their smartphone and react immediately. Equipment, products, and other corporate assets at the manufacturing level, as well as those within security enclosures, can also be continuously monitored via camera video for safety purposes.
“It’s not just about sufficient offline analysis, because our goal is to identify a problem downstream much earlier, which requires real-time monitoring of event information for critical components,” said Evan Guarnaccia, SAS Solutions Architect at SAS. “It could be a small motor that, when it has a problem, will cause a larger failure, or it could be a very expensive component.”
Active IIoT supporting video streaming
Early Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) was built around sensors, robots, and automation. As more manufacturing takes place in decentralized factories, these IIoT technologies will continue to play a crucial role.
Going forward, we can expect to see more video streams, allowing supervisors and managers to observe practices in factories they cannot be physically present with and to proactively respond to what they see.
Historically, manufacturing engineers have faced challenges when trying to communicate product designs with others. Today, they can communicate via video streaming with design engineers located halfway around the world. In practice, manufacturing engineers can demonstrate the complexity of a product to design engineers in real time.
This facilitates more timely and effective product modifications and amplifies the power of digital twins, allowing engineers in the design and manufacturing fields to virtually tour products before individual chips, bolts, engines, or user interfaces are installed.
