Making Industry 4.0 Happen Now

RE: Making Industry 4.0 Happen Now

bannie — Sun, 04 Sep 2016 14:16:12 GMT

Personally, I welcome Industry 4.0, but we will encounter some of the same issues we discovered in 3.0...

There are so many tasks that still require a human touch that I don't worry about the low skill marketplace... I work mostly in new product development. Bringing new products to the market, and preparing them to be passed on to sustaining operations engineers with automation systems & teams of humans to run & maintain them.

We always have to work with sustainability and cost / benefit ratios in mind in 3.0 and it will be the same in 4.0.

I cannot program a robot to do 3D laser scanning inspections for a prototype build because it costs $$$ for me to program the system - too much for a one-off. then having to reprogram for subtle changes in the next proto iteration... I can just use a FARO / ROMER arm to laser scan it faster than programming a robot.

Once the design is in pre-production pilot phase - then I can work on automation systems. This gives us a 100% inspection rate of production.

Manufacturing is a dirty, and difficult field to automate fully... We need people to clean & maintain robotic cells, we need them to monitor for emergency purposes. We need electricians & technicians to install them... We need facility management to keep things running.

It is still cheaper to maintain systems with periodic routine maintenance schedules on outlook calendars rather than fill our systems with sensors that can & will fail when spatter builds up on them from a weld fixture... This is what I foresee delaying the full implementation of 4.0.

We still need press operators to run the 4000 ton presses to blank and form structural steel parts...

Humans will never be replaced fully - the laws of economics will make sure of that.

RE: Making Industry 4.0 Happen Now

Instructorman — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 16:43:10 GMT

Excellent article Randall. Very relevant to the work I am doing developing applied research capacity at a major polytechnic institute. I especially found useful the link you provided to the pwc report on the global Industry 4.0 survey.

With all the glowing predictions about a hyper-connected, ultra efficient world of automated manufacturing comes the imperative to ethically respond to the impact these unstoppable changes will have on people - the people that are currently employed in pre-Industry 4.0 factories and plants, and on future people that will reach adulthood in a world of diminished low-skill jobs. How can we all be consumers if we don't have incomes?

Mark

RE: Making Industry 4.0 Happen Now

michaelkellett — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 08:06:37 GMT

Sometimes it pays to temper one's enthusiasm for the next big thing with a little reality check:

The Paperless Future - 'Emma'