The Nine Pillars of Industry 4.0
Published on : Saturday 05-12-2020
Leandro Profes takes a look at the nine pillars of Industry 4.0 and how these are relevant to the industrial activity in the contemporary era.
Emerged in Germany around 2012, the concept of Industry 4.0 involves technological innovations in the fields of automation and information technology for manufacturing. With the basic objective of creating faster, more flexible and efficient processes, the fourth industrial revolution promotes the union of physical and digital resources, connecting machines, and systems and assets in order to produce higher quality items at reduced costs. To achieve these results, it is necessary to generate a high level of articulation between the main technologies that form the concept, the so-called pillars.
Presented here are the nine pillars of Industry 4.0 and their relevance to industrial activity today:
Big Data and Analytics
Analysis and management of large amounts of data provides increased performance and optimisation of industrial processes, equalising energy consumption with production quality by providing a better reading of scenarios and faster decision making.
Robotics
By incorporating intelligent robots into industry processes, the sector gains in performance and availability, leaving the execution of logistical and repetitive production tasks to the machines. In addition to reducing costs, these robots represent an important increase in production.
Simulation
In Industry 4.0, computer simulation is used in industrial plants to analyse data in real time, bringing the physical and virtual world closer together, and in improving machine configurations to test the next product on the virtual production line before any real change, generating resource optimisation, better performance and more savings.
Horizontal & Vertical Integration
Currently, not all systems are fully integrated, with a lack of cohesion between company-customers and even the production process of an industry lacks full integration. Industry 4.0 proposes a better harmony between everyone who is part of the ecosystem, guaranteeing an integral management of experience so that value chains are truly automated.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of the connection between a network of physical objects, environments, vehicles and machines by means of embedded electronic devices, allowing a faster and more effective collection and exchange of information. In the products and services industry, IoT represents the integration of technologies that were not previously connected and that are now interconnected through an IP-based network.
Cybersecurity
The industry of the future demands that all areas of the company are connected, both corporate (IT) and automation and operational (OT) networks. Thus, it is essential that companies have robust cybersecurity systems to protect systems and information from possible threats and failures that can cause disruption in production.
Cloud Computing
The number of tasks related to the production of goods and services in industry has grown more and more, demanding the use of applications and data shared between different locations and systems beyond the limits of a company's servers. Cloud computing provides features that reflect an important reduction in cost, time and efficiency in performing these tasks.
Additive Manufacturing
Also known as 3D printing, this pillar involves the production of parts from overlapping layers of material, usually in powder form, to obtain a 3D model. This strategy can be used to create customised products that offer construction benefits and complex designs.
Augmented Reality
Using the resources of this pillar, it is possible, for example, to send assembly instructions via cell phone for the development of prototype parts and to use augmented reality glasses for the management and operation of certain machines, improving work procedures.
As seen above, the integration between the technologies is essential for Industry 4.0, once each one individually can bring part of the process to achieve the goal of fast, flexible and efficient processes.
The industry processes and products were always, as we call, traditional and conservative to change technology and products, so one of the big challenges for Industry 4.0 is how to get products to support the nine pillars with the necessary robustness, for that basically two industries are being challenged to move from their core business: Industrial Automation industry and Information Technology industry.
Information Technology has been challenged to go to the factory field with hazardous environment to implement routines, big data, analytics and so one of the main challenges here is what hardware to use? There are wide options of hardware in the market, but most of them are not feasible to the field, they are not robust enough to support the environment.
On the other hand, Industrial Automation industry has been challenged to perform scripts that normally are on IT processes, which brings a huge challenge of performance for the field devices that normally are designed to be low power robust devices.
The best option to promote this integration is to keep IT and Automation in the processes and for that all automation devices need to be able to communicate with IT and all features of IT software and machines. To that end, automation devices are now beginning to be able to communicate with IT processes and software. Today we can start to see compact PLCs being able to execute SQL commands, with Ethernet IP communication and even MQTT to send information to the cloud using Wifi or even 3G/4G dongles connected directly in their USB port.
We have been asked to do that and we did, changing the concept of our products from standard PLCs to Edge Controllers with embedded PLCs, which means we combine all robustness and tradition of a PLC in a new product able to open the doors of any traditional industry to Industry 4.0.
That is the best solution, once this keeps all features and requirements of traditional industry and industrial automation in the new era, without the need to move everything away and bring new and unknown devices to the field and processes. In addition to that, it is important to integrate all of our controllers (or so called Edge Controllers and PLCs), which means you need only one programming software, based on IEC61131-3, to program, simulate and monitor all field controllers, including the possibility for you create your own communication protocol or use one (or two, or three, or even more) of the most common communication protocols of the market, like Modbus, OPC UA/DA, Ethernet IP, CanOpen, etc. In other words, integration, flexibility and openness are the new needs for controllers to open the doors for Industry 4.0.
Leandro Profes, Product Director – North America, at Altus Automation is a passionate enthusiast in electronics and technology. He has been working in the automation and electronic field for the last 20 years, with a background in Electrical Engineering with Masters Business in Management and Marketing of technological base industries. Leandro was responsible for development of many products and their introduction to the market, including controllers, memory and IoT devices.
(Author contact: https://www.linkedin.com/in/profes and www.altus.com.br)
