Industrie 4.0, currently one of the most frequently discussed topics in German-speaking area. The term ‘INDUSTRIE 4.0’ or also called ‘Smart Industry’ has been introduced in Hannover Messe 2013 as a part of High-Tech Strategy Action Plan governed by Germany Trade& Invest organization. The aim deals with intentions to create lead markets, partnership between science and industry with continuous improvements of the general conditions for innovations. The High-Tech Strategy 2020 puts Germany as a lead provider of science and technology-based solutions in these four specific fields:
=> Climate/ Energy
=> Health/ Nutrition
=> Mobility
=> Security
=> Communication
As I mentioned before, ‘INDUSTRIE 4.0’ takes a huge part of High-Tech Strategy Action 2020 Plan as one of the leading projects. According to Prof. Henning Kagermann from National Academy of Science and Engineering: ‘INDUSTRIE 4.0 is the German strategic initiative to take up a pioneering role in industrial IT which is currently revolutionizing the manufacturing engineering sector’.
BUT what does this term ‘INDUSTRIE 4.0’ mean?
=> INDUSTRIE 4.0 represents the coming fourth industrial revolution on the way to an Internet of Things, Date and Services. It connects embedded system production technologies and smart production process to pave the way to a new technological age. In other words, industrial production machinery no longer simply ‘processes’ the product, but the product communicates with the machinery to tell it exactly what to do (GTAI, 2016). The reason why Germany puts some much effort in this project is that technology is the main building cell for innovations and innovations shape the future.
Furthermore, an important aspect of INDUSTRIE 4.0 is the connection between the physical and the virtual world and this connection can be established due to CPS (Cyber Physical Systems). Cyber Physical Systems are defined as “set of integrations of computation and physical processes. Embedded computer and networks monitor and control the physical processes, usually with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa.” (Lee, 2008). The simple explained why CPS are important is that CPS monitor physical processes, then create a virtual copy of the physical world and then make decentralized decisions.
In more depth, we recognize six design principles of Industrie 4.0:
=> Interoperability: it means that it is crucial to set up standards in order to rule the communication between CPS of various manufacturers.
=> Virtualization: necessary for an overall monitoring of physical processes, thus enables us to use it for simulations of models.
=> Decentralization: it enables the different systems make their decisions separately.
=> Real-time capability: collecting of data in each step of the process should be in real-time.
=> Service orientation: reliable service must be considered as well.
=> Modularity: Modularity brings up flexibility in terms of that each individual model must be designed in such way that it is easy to replace or apply new innovations.
What are the benefits of 4.0?
After personal interview with Mr. Erhardt from Omron Electronics GmbH (in Hannover Messe 2016). I can conclude five most important benefits of Industrie 4.0. They are following:
=> Revolutionary progress in combining Science and Businesses
=> Increase in an overall competitiveness among businesses
=> Optimization of manufacturing processes
=> Immeasurable potential in terms of innovations
=> Increased profits as well as employment opportunities
I personally believe that ‘Industrie 4.0’ will take crucial part in shaping the future in the next five to ten years among the entire world. Therefore, one might ask the question:
Did I choose the right field of study?
Reference:
GTAI, (2016). INDUSTRIE 4.0: Smart Manufacturing for the future. Retrieved from: http://www.gtai.de/GTAI/Content/EN/Invest/_SharedDocs/Downloads/GTAI/Brochures/Industries/industrie4.0-smart-manufacturing-for-the-future-en.pdf
Lee, E. A., 2008: Cyber Physical Systems: Design Challenges. 11th IEEE Symposium on Object Oriented Real Time Distributed Computing.
Otto B., Pantek T., Hermann M., (2015). Design Principles for Indutrie 4.0 Scenarios. TU Dortmund: Working paper. Retrieved from: http://www.snom.mb.tu-dortmund.de/cms/de/forschung/Arbeitsberichte/Design-Principles-for-Industrie-4_0-Scenarios.pdf