Industry 4.0

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is also known as Industry 4.0 is empowering manufacturing industries so much so that the process of manufacturing itself is becoming SMART and EFFICIENT in many ways.

Manufacturers can connect their physical machines with digital sensors and thereby have gained control over what their machines are capable of doing.

The data captured by the sensors (a part of the Industrial IOT solution) helps manufacturers or business owners to -

• Improve Productivity

• Better streamline their processes

• Get Insights into their Day to day operations

• Tighten the spending or Direct the money flow into the right areas of the business.

What does it take to transform their business so that it leverages all the benefits of Industrial IOT.

It takes the following -

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1. All the Physical machines need to be connected to the IoT network. This also may involve various machines being integrated. When I say diverse this could be machined providing different functions, and also machines with different OEMs. Being connected also means integration.

2. Once they are connected, now comes the data capturing part. Each machine on the network may have a different interface altogether. As a result, capturing data will involve identifying the right input and output. Also ensuring that they have the RS485 interface in place and enabled. This protocol will enable the data capture.

3. Once connected and captured, this step involves gaining visibility into the system. Develop insights about the various KPIs - the unplanned downtime, the cycle time for the product (actual and measured), quality parameters, the rejections and so on.

4. Analyse and make informed decisions.

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Once this happens the next phase involves, integrating Industrial IOT enabled manufacturing plant with other business functions through ERP and MES.

Some use ERP which covers the majority of business functions.

How does the integration help?

It impacts the Production Module to a large extent.

It removes much manual intervention, especially in the production module. What gets produced at the machine is captured and sent to the ERP, which further helps in sync with other business functions.

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