Industry 4.0: Technology Trends Drive Manufacturing Innovation

At present, industry is experiencing a period of change called the fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0). The previous industrial revolution brought us machinery, electricity and computers. As we enter the era of intelligent interconnected machines and intelligent automation, the fourth industrial revolution is forming more changes than before.

Especially the manufacturing industry, which is undergoing great changes. Many manufacturers are undergoing digital transformation. They are making smarter products and using the power of data and analysis to turn to service models, creating new sources of income and finding ways to grow. Equally important, they are using new technology trends such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and cloud computing to simplify business processes, reduce costs and improve competitiveness.

This is the subject of my recent conversation with Eric prevost, vice president in charge of manufacturing, automobile and industry strategy of Oracle Bone Inscriptions Company. Prevost has more than 20 years of experience in supervising digital transformation in companies including IBM and Capgemini, and he is fully capable of talking about the opportunities and challenges faced by enterprises in this field.

We first introduced three major opportunities to promote transformation. First of all, enterprises can accelerate innovation and bring new products and services to the market faster, because the value chain of digital connection provides immediate feedback on product performance and customer satisfaction, creating a closed loop of market performance, all the way to the engineering process.

The second opportunity makes the enterprise more digital. This means using data to inform decisions and become more accurate-it also allows better forecasting and switching to new models, such as predictive maintenance and automated processes, such as logistics, inventory and production planning.

By taking advantage of some emerging technological trends, actions can be taken on all these opportunities. Cloud computing and high-performance computing enable enterprises to build more accurate and high-resolution models for their products, services and operations. These services are based on cloud computing and pay on demand, which means that even small and medium-sized enterprises can afford them, providing them with best practices and advanced analysis models, such as digital twins, which are no longer only available to large global organizations with rich resources.

Closely related to this trend are new technologies that enable us to better understand data. Here, we talked about the Internet of Things, which makes it possible to connect a large number of networked devices and enjoy data, as well as artificial intelligence and data science.

"I separate these because they can all be used in different ways: data science can include artificial intelligence, but the new generation of data science platform can conduct more in-depth mathematical and statistical analysis of data, even if it is not artificial intelligence," prevost told me.

Another huge and important trend in manufacturing industry is the digitalization of products themselves. Today, most smart products have an element that is not directly related to the physical or mechanical aspects of the product. The software layer can be changed and updated without expensive physical redesign and redesign process. Usually, it is the key to the ability of products to collect and transmit data, to help manufacturers better understand how they are used and what value they provide to customers.

Prevost said: "You can have a more personalized product, an upgradeable product, you have a longer life cycle, and at the same time you can bring some innovations to your customers without changing the physical and mechanical aspects. You can be more creative with your customers. "

The manufacturing industry has quickly adopted Industry 4.0 thinking in its workflow. L 'Oré al, a cosmetics brand, has brought its manufacturing technology to consumers and created a mini "smart factory" which can be deployed as a pop-up shop in shopping centers. Here, customers can make personalized cosmetic products for them while waiting, and these products even have personalized packaging. Adidas, a sporting goods manufacturer, has released a series of shoes. The soles of these shoes are customized in 3D printing, which can completely fit every customer's feet.

Prevost also introduced me to a B2B power equipment manufacturer, which is a customer in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. By implementing Internet of Things processes and other Industry 4.0 technologies, they have been able to increase their manufacturing uptime by 60% and reduce the number of manual processes by 55%, which has had a huge business impact. It can also reduce the floor space required for its operation by 80%.

Although at first, this may cause concern about manpower redundancy, it is not necessarily the case. The reason for prevost is that. "When we turned to an automated factory, it was more complicated to manage. It needs more people to design and maintain it and create new business. "

In addition to using existing data to do new things, the most innovative manufacturers are moving beyond the traditional structured data sets they have been using to new data sets they have never used. A good example of using unstructured data comes from a wind turbine manufacturer. In addition to monitoring all the traditional data about operational efficiency, the manufacturer also monitors social media chats to understand local attitudes and opinions in the areas under consideration for development. "It's very important for them to win deals in some places," prevost told me. "This is very interesting to me, because it is a new data that they didn't get in the past."