Industrie 4.0

Industry 4.0 is one of the most frequently used term - in context to improved productivity, flexibility and securing the standard of living in Germany and Europe. In spite of the various initiatives that primarily focus on the formulation of the technical requirements, there is currently no common understanding in terms of content and implementation. With the goal to estimate the degree of implementation and define future potential projects, this article defines a comprehensive and pragmatic rating system. Based on industrial studies and individual professional experiences, various criteria are captured and used. There are already two use case demonstrations in real industrial applications.

By digital transformation the German SME sector is faced with huge challenges. It also turns existing corporate processes upside down. 82 percent of the managers who were interviewed for a recent survey expect that the internal communication will accelerate significantly. Four out of five are convinced that the transfer of knowledge will play a key role. Three quarters are also convinced that it is necessary that IT and other departments close ranks. Business-simulations effectively support the required transformation process. Topic of this article is to show how they can help changing the attitude and perspective to generate sustainable value from Industry 4.0.

The development of industry 4.0 concepts in production and logistics has progressed rapidly in recent years. The systems being affected by rapid technological changes, such as the introduction of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The realization of CPS requires interdisciplinary considerations of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, information and business management. The full potential of industry 4.0 can only be deployed, when in addition to technical challenges also business opportunities are involved in the development. The aim of this paper is to show specific requirements for development of CPS systems and to identify approaches for Cyber-Physical Product-Service Systems (CPSS).

The world’s rising energy and raw material costs are a reason for many companies to reduce energy and resource waste in their own production. Based on this plan, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) initiated in 2009 the project EnHiPro. Until May, 2012 the Technische Universität Braunschweig and three other research partners developed a system to make the energy demand of machines tangible by utilizing smart metering strategies. For the analysis and visualization of the energy flows, the c4c Engineering company was brought into the team in order to engineer the EnyFlow app that makes the energy flows and states of machines transparent on an tablet PC.

The importance of data science for production and logistics continues to grow because more data are available due to Industry 4.0-Applications used for process and system optimization. In addition, the improved methods and tools for data analysis enable an easier processing of application-specific issues. This article is the second part relating to data science in production and logistics. While the first article dealt with the definition of terms and the potential of data analysis, the article at hand is dedicated to the application of data science in production and logistics by means of various application examples.

The existing approaches of Industry 4.0 promise a fundamental change of production organisation and production technologies. The demanded IT-networking and flexibility of production change the value creation process elementary. Hence, there are new requirements emerging to ensure the process. Especially, for the German industry, the adherence of quality requirements is the key factor in being competitive. According to the state of the art, to reduce system down time, systematic testing of the functionality of production facilities before commissioning is employed. Due to the dynamization of production, testing in the engineering and commissioning phase will not be sufficient in the future. The ability to ensure the production of tomorrow plays an important role in increasing the profitability, and with it, the acceptance for Industry 4.0. This article describes the structural changes of a smart production and its effects on testing.

The traditional data management approach is resulting in multiple silos of duplicate data. Across applications, there are multiple data services generating tremendous amounts of redundant data copies that utilize valuable storage capacity and a tremendous amount of storage and data management resources. Most companies try to leverage the data in order to increase the performance and accessibility of production data. A radically different approach is required in order to solve the data copy explosion problem: Copy-Data-Management, based on the virtualization of data copies.

The third industrial revolution culminated in the Computer Integrated Manufacturing but limited computing power and the dystopia of a deserted factory prevented its success. Industry 4.0, however, stands for the integration of people, technology and organization. Based on the networking of products, tools and means of production become all relevant information available. The combination with cloud computing and big data enables the analysis and utilization of such information.

The implementation of industry 4.0 concepts requires a new understanding of data processing and analysis. Data Science integrates approaches of mathematical modelling and performant implementation to analyse data of specific application areas. Within this first article, the basics of Data Science are presented and perspectives for a data-driven production and logistics are discussed. Within a second article in a following edition, the process steps for structured data analysis will be explained and illustrated by means of application examples.

Industry 4.0 gain in importance in recent years. Research and business realize increasingly that targeted activities in this area are necessary to preserve the market power of the industry. This article provides a summary of Industry 4.0 initiatives in ten European countries as well as their comparison based on different criteria.