Chicago, Illinois - The global movement known as “Industry 4.0” (also referred to as the Industrial Internet of Things) stems from the question and subsequent answers to: “What’s the next stage of the evolution for manufacturing?” The goal of the movement is to make production more efficient, cost-effective, and flexible and to deliver a better product to the customer in less time. Rather than striving to optimize individual engineering, production, or logistics stages, Industry 4.0 demands re examining and improving the way these stages inter-relate.
The Industry 4.0 era is designed to move manufacturers beyond the era of isolated silos or vacuums within the production environment. This is characterized by Bills of Material (BOM) handed to purchasing, which is then expected to base its acquisitions on those documents. The factory floor and the shipping department then work off of the same information. This may work in an older environment, but the information becomes quickly incorrect and outdated in a fast-moving automated facility where customer changes and customization requests occur regularly. In the Industry 4.0 world, when somebody updates information on the engineering side, everything downstream gets updated automatically as well. That information is shared in real time—quicker, with fewer errors, more rapid evolutions, and with easier changes. Using this Industry 4.0 approach, with end-to-end engineering tools, standardized systems and automated processing machines, value chains can also become more compact and efficient.
Andrew Prichard from Rittal will discuss the current state of Industry 4.0 technology and examine how the concept is leveraged within electronic enclosure and panel manufacturing to create a seamless value chain. Discussion points include:
- What brought us to this “4.0” point in manufacturing automation?
- An in-depth look at how end-to-end engineering tools, standardized systems and automated processing machines greatly help in making value chains even more efficient.
- How do the elements of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and smart factories contribute to Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)?
- Specific examples of the advantages gained through the linking of people and information with design and production equipment, resulting in a lightning-fast value chain.
- A case study example of how Rittal applies Industry 4.0 advantages – from customer-specified design modification precision to design performance predictions and better energy efficiency within the engineering and production of custom enclosures.
Registration for the IMTS 2016 Integrated Industries Conference is now open.