Industrie 4.0

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”.

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 ...