INDUSTRY 4.0 and What It Means for Your Business.
What is INDUSTRY 4.0?
You may aware of the “Industrial Revolution” – known as the first Industrial Revolution. The first Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Europe and the United States in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840.
Today, we are experiencing what has become known for the fourth Industrial Revolution – also tagged as INDUSTRY 4.0. This NEW revolution is the ongoing transformation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices combined with the latest smart technology.
Digitization has been a backbone of the new revolution. The advancements in digital technology has certainly fueled the revolution, but changes in our society with COVID-19 has forced manufacturing and industry to advance the change to a digital world.
What Improvements in Digital Technology will be a Benefit to Your Business?
Digital changes have largely influenced Manufacturing and Industry and it is largely influencing us on a personal level as well.
There has been a push in recent years towards using sensors for manufacturing processes and for condition-based maintenance equipment reliability monitoring. The older sensors were inter-connected with wires that captured the condition of the equipment and would communicate the signals to a central location for analysis. Many of the technologies were designed for specific function(s) and being able to cross talk was a challenge.
WIRELESS SENSORS
What has really driven the changes in just the past couple of years is the development of MEMS sensors that use low power (extending battery life), lack wire connectivity by utilizing WiFi or Bluetooth communications protocols, and will now cross talk between monitoring platforms. Tying the sensor data acquisition and data analysis into a tablet or smart phone has reduced the size of the data analyzers and offers flexibility with development of an in-house network based system or cloud based data collection service with built in analytics.
Digitization Questions to Ask. Do you want a stand-alone system or do you want an integrated system?
With the ever-increasing technological options available, It is very easy to choose a system and then find the system is a stand alone system that lacks growth flexibility or adaptability should you change processes or equipment.
Choosing a solution that can grow with your business and holds flexibility with sensor types and sensor options now and into the future may be a better choice.
One thing that we all will be facing is the consideration of change. What was new a year ago is sometimes consider old a year later. That is certainly true within the environment of condition monitoring options. The advancements of sensor technology that now incorporates manufacturing process into equipment reliability surveillance and maintenance monitoring is changing and maturing year over year. Making sure the design of the system fits form and function with flexibility for us is a major consideration.
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