UK plc needs to jump on the Industry 4.0 concept, urges GAMBICA 18 October 2013

"Industry 4.0 is an opportunity for the UK to apply its many skills and technologies, and gradually become one of the first [European] states to eliminate low-cost labour as a pre-requisite of a successful manufacturing economy."

So says Steve Brambley, deputy director of GAMBICA and convener of the automation and control association's VSD (variable speed drives) group of the 'networked industry' concept, currently gaining ground in Germany, and characterised as the fourth industrial revolution, following the introduction of electric power.

And he adds: "If the UK thinks strategically and co-ordinates action between government and industry, while it still stands level with other countries on the starting line, Industry 4.0 could be the reason why the UK is ultimately successful in redefining itself as a manufacturing economy."

Industry 4.0 is closely related to other concepts such as 'machine-to-machine communication' (M2M) and 'the Internet of Things' (IoT), and in Germany is being driven by, among others, Siemens had a key role in developing.

"Industry 4.0 is the next paradigm shift towards self-organising factories, decentralised production, and machines able to communicate with each other and with the products and components they are making," explains Brambley.

"The direct consequence is that production lines will become more flexible and energy-efficient. The era of mass production is giving way to an era of mass-customisation," he adds – explaining that industrial wireless networks and distributed machine intelligence "will allow customised products to be made profitably, with consistent quality and previously unattainable process and energy efficiency".

Says Brambley: "An Industry 4.0 smart factory would also reduce the risk of human errors. The human element in manufacturing would remain essential, but will tend to focus on the programming and servicing of machines."

For him, this is about increased interconnectivity allowing devices to be more autonomous, with systems authorising machines to operate independently, according to manufacturing requirements.

"Extra control and monitoring equipment creates additional data, which will need to be handled in real time by the industrial control software of the future," comments Brambley.

"This will be possible, thanks to a wider distribution of processing power around the operation, which will allow raw data to be turned into useful information in manageable packages before it clogs up the network," he continues.

"Such a degree of distributed data handling would have been a lot less practical before the development of modern low-power processors, which has been driven by the mobile phone and portable computing markets."

Sounds fanciful? Brambley points to the German federal government, which has already made €200 million available to help industry associations, research institutes and companies develop implementation strategies.

He also highlights research projects, such as the RES-COM project or the Intelligent Technical Systems OstWestfalenLippe (OWL) cluster, which have already been launched.

"Given Germany's excellent track record in automation over the last 30 years, there is a good chance the country will be successful in adopting these emerging technologies and delivering essential changes to manufacturing norms," he warns.

Brian Tinham

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