For manufacturing companies, as products become more complex, production needs to adapt to keep up with the demand. Too often, outdated supply chain operations are lacking in transparency.
Growth and expansion are key goals for most businesses: improving product quality and increasing productivity, while staying competitive and remain profitable. Representing the latest industrial revolution, industry 4.0 is a transformation in manufacturing regarding the way that machines produce and move our products.
What is the Industrial Revolution 4 0?
The first industrial revolution is the transition of people from working on a farm to a factory. It was the mechanization through water and steam power that propelled the growth of the industry and the technology development in manufacturing.
In the year of 1831, Michael Faraday discovered the electric current which soon replaced the water and steam-powered machine. The second industrial revolution is the beginning of mass production and assembly lines.
The third industrial revolution is the adoption of computers. This allows machines to automate most tasks. Then, computers started to talk to each other creating networks of computerized machines, this is where industry 4.0 is taking place today.
What Makes Industry 4.0 Different Than 3.0?
Machines in industry 3.0 can automate certain tasks, however, they still need human input to control and trigger actions. The idea of industry 4.0 is to have machines to make its own decisions with minimal human intervention.
For this to happen, machines, products, and devices need to be connected through the internet. This is called the IoT, or Internet of Things*. When machines began their network, it starts to gain data. Thanks to Machine Learning**, the system get smarter at identifying and analyzing data patterns over time.
Internet of Things for Manufacturers
IoT allows more devices to get connected. This enables the system to gather and analyze more the tremendous data from machines and products across logistics and supply chain layers.