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Home  Trends and Topics  Directions

The thinking factory

March 2013

In the future, products and machines armed with artificial

 The Internet of Things
intelligence will communicate with one another and with
their production environment. The magic word: “Industry
4.0”.

The interlinkage of the digital and real worlds has long since become a fact of
life. We use our smartphones to find out, in real time, whether trains or
planes have been delayed. At home, we track parcel post packages with a few
mouse clicks. This net-working of inanimate objects, people and information
systems is preparing us for the “Internet of things”, even now a popular topic
of discussion. An increase in interconnectedness will not only affect our
personal lives. Information technology will also lead to lasting changes in
industry. This “Fourth Industrial Revolution” will soon become reality. The
experts are unanimous on that.

The first harbingers of this change are being seen even now. One example is
the expanding automation of production processes. Augmenting this trend in
Industry 4.0 will be the development of intelligent monitoring and decision-

making systems. The products are “aware” of their history, their current state,
their target state, and various options for attaining that state. What’s more,
they are linked with the company’s business processes. This transforms the
product from a passive object into an active agent in manufacturing, one that
can itself “decide” on how it is to be made.
 Both the products and the machines will be able to communicate inside International
tomorrow’s factory and will monitor themselves. They will determine whether
a fault is present and, using independent calculations, will determine when
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maintenance is required. These changes will make production and logistics
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single central unit.
At present, it is primarily a question of creating the information technology
base needed for Industry 4.0. To do so, experts are trying out a variety of
methods intended to lend intelligence to the products being made. Two
potential options are quick response (QR) codes and radio-frequency
identification (RFID) chips. These communication paths are only one part of
the socalled cyber-physical production system (CPPS). CPPS is a production
network in which intelligent machines, warehousing systems, and operating
resources exchange information autonomously and launch actions as
appropriate.
No decision has been made on the software standards to be used for CPPS.
Communication between machines and products requires entirely new
communication protocols, since it is no longer a simple matter of
transporting data from one entity to the next. New protocols will have to be
able to describe machinery data so that is machine-readable. That will enable
other machines and systems to take action, based on this information.
Semantic technologies such as these are essential to guaranteeing the
interoperability of the individual systems. Even today, CPPS is being tested in
experimental factories.
In efforts to reduce complexity, researchers are designing modular production
systems. Thus they can expand the factory bit by bit, adding individual
components as needed. Another advantage is that faults can be located and
rectified more easily. One factor is decisive for future economic success,
especially in high-wage countries. Those nations must not just embrace the
Fourth Industrial Revolution. They must also contribute to shaping it.

The four industrial revolutions

First industrial revolution (end of the 18th century):

Introduction of mechanical manufacturing systems

Second industrial revolution (beginning of the 20th century):

Mass production incorporating division of labor and with the help of
electrical energy

Third industrial revolution (since the mid-1970s):

Automation of production processes with the help of electronics and
information technologies

Fourth industrial revolution:

Integrating Internet technologies into production processes and
networking those processes

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