Industrie 4.0

The number of cyber-physical systems (CPS) in industrial environments is growing based on the effort of projects like Industrie 4.0. CPS offer the potential to improve processes in modern value networks. By improving processes, especially jobs with no demand for qualified workers can be dispensed. Another effect are jobs being standardised, that they become very monotonous for the workers. For providing satisfying jobs especially for low qualified workers in future working environments some opportunities CPS offer were presented. First opportunities consumer devices offer were presented, second concepts for user-friendly human machine interfaces were illustrated.

The development of information and communication technologies (ICT) is progressing rapidly and is seen in today‘s economic action as a key driver of innovation. Future industrial production is characterized by a high degree of customization of products and a strong production flexibility. The rapid development of the Internet has contributed especially in recent years in the private life of merging the real with the virtual world and will get stronger in the future of industrial sector. This paradigm shift is referred to as Industry 4.0. This paper gives an overview of the Industry 4.0 and represents the potential of the transformation process.

Industry 4.0 is part of the high-tech strategy of the German government. It promotes the computerization of established industrial areas like  manufacturing. The Smart Factory, characterized by resource efficiency, consistency of processes, a common technological base and the usage of the “Internet of Things” is the strategic objective. Prof. Herkommer prefers to call this process “evolution” instead of “revolution”.

Automation technology moved into factories by the end of last century. Since then, production processes have changed dramatically worldwide. While companies first focused on optimizing interdepartmental collaboration, today the cross-company collaboration increasingly comes into focus. After all, in a globalized economy companies need to operate in networks. In order to cooperate efficiently and effectively in global supply chains, transparent structures and standards are indispensable. This applies first and foremost to the logistics.

Companies, industrial and information technology service providers as well as the FIR at the RWTH Aachen are cooperating to implement the so called enterprise integration center (EICe), the infrastructure for the future project “industry 4.0” of the German government. There are three innovation labs and a demonstration factory ready for use, so research at a productive factory with actual production data becomes reality. With this infrastructure the EICe will approach the future of industrial research.

Information technology is one of the key enabling technologies of future manufacturing. In the two basic business processes manufacturing is located at the intersection point. However, for manufacturing and its value adding purpose, information technology has to be considered as a tool. In this paper the author describes an approach to the components of a new information model inside the future factory.

Industrial and automation systems from the corporate IT perspective for a long time have been deserted islands because, these were mainly isolated systems. While this is largely still the case, through the increasing use of IT standards industry systems with its stand-alone solutions are more and more involved in the internal office networks, or even connected to the Internet. Especially the transition to the so called “Industry 4.0” vision bears new requirements and challenges for industry systems - particularly in the area of security. For more interconnectedness also means greater security needs. Industry 4.0 (smart factory, factory of the future) means that machinery and equipment gain the ability to adapt their behavior through self-tuning and reconfiguration to changing conditions. The goal is highly optimized processes that produce high quality products tailored to individual customer needs. In such manufacturing processes of the future, for example, a large number of ...