INDUSTRY 4.0
EPISODE 1
by Rob Miller, Whitten Battenfeld/RotoLoad
30 ROTOWORLD® | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2020
INDUSTRY 4.0
EPISODE 1 What is Industry 4.0? What exactly is INDUSTRY 4.0, and how does it apply to ROTOMOLDING? Over the next several issues, that is what I will attempt to answer. I thought it might be helpful to lay some groundwork, by explaining some of the history and basis for the term. The term itself “Industry 4.0” started showing up in Germany around 2011 as a way to label the 4th industrial revolution. It was introduced by a group of people from various business and academic fields as a method to enhance German competitiveness in manufacturing. Let’s go a little farther back for a little more history. INDUSTRY 1.0 The first industrial Revolution. The first industrial revolution started around 1760 and related primarily to the advent of steam power. Steam power made everything easier, and at the time so much was based around farming. Steam allowed “power” to be adapted to other industrial applications, increasing productivity and reducing labor. INDUSTRY 2.0 The second industrial revolution. That brings us to the early 1900’s and the development of science and mass production principles. Of course the most obvious and notable being Henry Ford and his application of these principles to the production line for the FORD Model T with a gasoline engine. INDUSTRY 3.0 The third industrial revolution. The digital age, beginning around the 1950’s, was the next major ground breaking development. If you think about it, most of what our current generations do on a minute-to-minute, day-to-day basis, and so very much of our lives, have been most profoundly affected by this major revolution. Some of us remember the time before cell phones!
That brings us to today, and as mentioned earlier, the 4th industrial revolution. Sometimes referred to as the internet of things or IoT, it seems that it can be a little difficult to get a real clear explanation or list of the disciplines for this new revolutionary development. Machines talking to machines, responding to each other, responding to the conditions that they (the machines) are experiencing, and not just talking but actually learning from each other, and modifying their performance, activity, movements, and tasks related to what they are learning from their machine counterparts. The one thing that is common in most white papers about Industry 4.0, is BIG DATA. Essentially, collecting huge amounts of data and using that data, and mining that data is what makes almost everything else possible within all of this machine to machine communication. If the “system” is not collecting DATA, then there is nothing to learn from, nothing to communicate with, and nothing historical for the machines to use to evaluate how they are performing, and what they need to change to make their performance better, more efficient, and more productive. Essentially DATA is the basis for it all. To me, that is where the real intelligence comes from in the development of Industry 4.0 platforms. If you think about it, it is not that hard to imagine an ethernet cable going from one machine to the other, and those two pieces of machinery talking together, or using the internet to accomplish the same tasks, eliminating any hard wiring. Even expanding this to multiple pieces of equipment is really not hard to imagine or understand. Think of most of our INTRANET systems in our offices… exactly the same, but desktop and laptop computers on a network, instead of machines. The real trick is how the machines collect the data, how and where they store it, how they organize it, how they access
it, and most of all, how they use it to make themselves perform better. The complexities can end up being quite overwhelming and mind boggling, when you begin to think about the extremely broad spectrum of potentially available data, and the infinite ways that it needs to be assembled, stored, organized, read, made, stored and kept safely, and still made readable and understandable by all types of complimentary machines, computers, cell phones tablets, etc. Similarly, there is the question of how the human side of industry can mine this data to learn, develop, advance, and make themselves, their companies, and their industry better once they receive it on their cell phone, or iPad. Where do we go from here? How does this apply to ROTATIONAL MOLDING? Well, that will be for the next edition, however, I do hope that I have communicated well enough to peak your interest and make you think. Make you think of how these principles can be applied to not only our industry, but specifically to your business. The big question continues to be, what are your issues, what are your struggles, what are your priorities and the continual, and repeatable WHY?
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