THE INDUSTRY 4.

0 REVOLUTION – OPPORTUNITIES
AND CHALLENGES

The fourth Industrial Revolution is based on cyber-physical systems.

In all Industrial Revolutions has happened the same: the work load was reduced a 50%
and the productivity was multiplied by 20.
In the past was very easy to survive but right now the companies depend a lot on
technology that they use.
German companies are better prepared than US companies. They have the technology,
but they have not solved well how to apply it to the industry. The development process
is very short, from decades to months.
In the past there was massive production, without customization. But now we have to
take care of customization. Flexibility allows us to achieve it. You can’t depend on a
factory management or something like that. Because we are taking very quickly a lot of
data and making decisions based on that. No one knows what machines are doing. We
before had 200 people in the factory but now we have 50. We want factories fully
automatic. And people will work in more creative and interesting works.
The industry is demanding multidisciplinary people that know a lot about a lot of fields.
You need to know what to do with the data that you are taking. All companies have
systems that are disconnected but with these 4.0 factories all systems will be connected
in real time. We are connecting customers with the Industry.
It’s very easy to program cobots you only have to move them across the path that you
want them to follow and they will follow it and learn it. There are some differences
between Robots and Cobots. Cobots have less speed and load capacity than normal
factory robots.
AGVs need a path infrastructure to follow but AMRs will create their own path to move
around the factory, calculating with AI the shortest way.
Simulation is giving tremendous efficiency. All the engineering work is hugely based on
simulation. Now the problems are the firmware issues. Now all is more related to
electronics.
Multidisciplinary understanding is a must for the Industry right now. IT system
responsibles are people with very low knowledge and experience in the Industry but OT
system responsibles are the opposite and the have a lot of experience. Many times OT
responsibles they don’t know how to solve a problem and they also don’t know that a
new tool exists which could help them.
Ciber-security is very important because the company has a lot of data in the cloud and
all the factory is moving to the cloud. So, we should have a plan A, B, C and so on in order
to be prepared for every kind of failure or attack.
Artificial environments are very good to train people to work in dangerous situations
and to lose the fear. They can work with no risk. They are not afraid because it’s like they
have already lived that.
Digital manufacturing allows to reduce the cost in 70%. They are very used in the
Aerospace Industry. Also, for manufacturing in the space to develop pieces directly in
the space station in order to fix problems there.
Right now, AI can be used for designing products, giving you very nice ideas and
prototypes only defining some boundaries. A curiosity is that a lot of them they are very
similar to natural structures and developments. This increases a lot the speed of
designing, prototyping, and developing new products. It reduces a lot time-to-market.
Small changes in very big scale can reduce a lot the cost. And this is where AI has a place.
A very important fact is cost reduction and thanks to 4.0 technologies we can achieve it.
The most important question is: How to make the product a service?

• Services for the customers so they will trust more in your product. You will keep
the customers with you. For this you need to know how the customer is using
the product. How much time the customer uses the product and after how much
time he decides to buy a new one.
• How you can do things more efficient, faster and with less investments. You need
to get some feedback also from your factory.
These two are the main objectives of Connected Industry 4.0 Companies.