What is Industry 4.0

Now days, Industry 4.0 has become a buzzword which are often said by a lot of consultant during digital transformation assessment. But what is it actually?! is it really a magic that can a company become bigger and generate more revenue?!. There are some different terminology referring to the industry 4.0 word on society. “Internet of things”, “internet of everything” & “Industrial internet of things” are basically referring to same things but with different vertical context.

Industry 4.0 is a concept where all machine on shop floor (we are borrowing terminology from manufacturing industry) are connected with all vertical component (such as : SCM, Fabrication, Material Preparation, Robotic Automation Etc) on the manufacturing process and they are able to “speak on their own” over the internet. This ability (the machine + the whole process chain to be able to “speak”) allow company to make decision based on the data (data driven decision) instead of intuition driven decision.

Industrial internet of things (IIoT) is M2M system that seamlessly connected with internet which are two core component of Industry 4.0

Different Vertical of IOT Strategy and Implementation

postimage100Vertical of Internet of Things

Industrial vertical (IIoT) has the most ITOT Convergence process compared to other vertical. by far its the most complex vertical.

Based on general consensus, there are at least 10 different of IOT Vertical and the list may evolve during next decades.

  • Industrial - consist different industry such as: manufacturing, oil and gas, energy and utilities and mining. Most of IIoT implementation are revolves around following use cases: smart factory, smart grid, asset tracking and HSSE (health, safety, security and environment)
  • Smart cities - Focus on controlling and monitoring public spcaes. for example : Traffic management, Smart surveillance.
  • Healthcare - Medical devices now days are already equipped with built in IoT system to assist the doctor during diagnostics/operation.
  • Smart homes / Consumer - Helping human to monitor and control their home with the application of home automation
  • Transportation / Logistics - Focus on fleet management, connected vehicle/vessel, connected supply chain and inventory.
  • Retail / E-commerce - mostly applied on the warehouse to monitor and track inventory like smart shelves.
  • Agriculture - Help farmer to monitor and automate the whole agriculture process chain such as : soil monitoring, automated irrigation and even health tracking for their livestock / animal.
  • Financial services - we might not expect to have IoT on financial sector, but the implementation of IoT on transportation section can be indirectly integrated with financial sector for automated insurances claim based on vehicle telemetry data.
  • Aero Spaces and Defense - modern warfare emphasizes the importance of technology over courage. for example the combination of Drone and IoT can be really deadly.
  • Education - Almost similar with smart home / consumer sector, IoT generally applied to monitor the classroom, detect attendance using face recognition.

Most Complex IoT Vertical

Industry often has an old and outdated legacy system that use SCADA and PLC that are not IoT ready. hence the ITOT convergence must ensure we do have agnostics protocol gateway that can retrieve any data from any protocol.

Industrial internet of things (IIoT) is the largest vertical of IOT because it has the most technology enabler compared to other vertical like eduction/financial services/agriculture/smart cities.

Industry 4.0 Vs M2M

We might wondering that the ability of machine to speak already been there over some decades and its been implemented word wides. it was called as M2M (machine to machine). So whats the differences between M2M and Industry 4.0 ?

M2M (Machine to Machine)

What makes industry 4.0 and M2M differ is how to the machine data processed and analyzed. On M2M system, machine data often only retrieved as a digital raw data(usually its called as telemetry data) and not further processed/mined. for example : retrieving the vibration level and hydraulic level of bench press bending machine and predicting when the machine going to have breakdown (predictive maintenance).

Industry 4.0 is a M2M System but on Steroid

On other hand, Industry 4.0 is the extended version of machine to machine (M2M) system. Instead of only retrieving telemetry data from machine, Industry 4.0 will combining M2M data (telemetry data) with the whole vertical process chain on the industry. For example, if we take production rate data on laser cutting machine and combine it with raw material stock data on warehouse, it can be further analyzed into material requirement planning with the help of analytics engine.

Moreover, if we analyze the data using AI/ML/DeepLearning/Gen-AI, Industry 4.0 System can automatically assist process engineer to procure the material and recommending real world action in case any issue happened during the procurement (eg: whats the best vendor to buy certain material that has lowest price and fastest delivery)

Why Industrial Internet of things is important for a industrial company?

on 2012 General Electric (GE) industrial internet report, they outline the economic impact of 1% economical improvement across various industries. On the report they mentioned some actual success stories of getting economical benefit from process efficiencies.

GE's former CEO, Jeff Immelt, popularized the idea (1% concept) as part of their Industrial Internet strategy.

For example on aviation industry, by just reducing 1% fuel consumption of the airplane, they could save $30 billion over 15 years. Those efficiencies can be achieved by installing sensor and analyze the data to make data driven decision for various process such as : predictive maintenance and fuel optimization.

Sample of capability that can increase efficiencies on manufacturing industry

Imagine if the efficiencies happened on all functional vertical, the economical benefit would be astronomical. Lets take a look on functional vertical/process stages of manufacturing industry which generally consist of following component:

  • SCM (supply chain management) - trace realtime material movement and material stock monitoring to ensure 360 of material visibility end to end. Visibility can prevent delay in material readiness (Outhouse or in house).
  • Material Preparation - the use of smart laser cutting machine instead of conventional cutting machine can make use differences. Combining laser cutting machine and IoT can reduce the energy consumption of the machine and ensuring the best laser parameter for different types of material which will result in overall better process efficiencies.
  • Fabrication & Assembly - Breakdown of the machine will cause production rate disruption. Combination of predictive maintenance, conditional based monitoring, auto MRP (material requirement planning) for machine’s spare part and integration with shop floor schedule will ensure minimal downtime of the machine.
  • Etc

Hence, it really important and mission critical for industrial company to continuously pursue 1% efficiencies improvement on each of their function vertical/process stages and gain the economic benefit.

Eventhough the benefit of Industry 4.0 is huge, we must acknowledge that the initial investment especially for sensor installation and technology enabler is not cheap. Proper investment and implementation plan need to be carefully calculate the cost and benefit and avoid failure/loss.

References

  • https://www.ge.com/news/sites/default/files/5901.pdf
  • https://www.ge.com/digital/industrial-internet