What is Industry 4.0?

Industry 4.0 is the place and time we are right now. Industry 4.0 is the movement and yes Industry 4.0 is the fourth industrial revolution. 

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So the fourth industrial revolution we cannot talk about that until we learn about the first industrial revolution and which happened around the time of the 1770s when the first factories went into place with water power and steam power. That was really when we went from farm to factory. And that is what we know as the first industrial revolution. About 100 years later we transitioned into the second industrial revolution. That was mainly powered by the invention of electricity and also around the time of the automobile and the assembly line. Fast forward to the 1970s we transitioned into the era of industry 3.0 which was primarily fueled by the networks and automation of PLCs and embedded computers. This was allowing us to automate processes online that will replace blue-collar jobs and create whiter-collar jobs like programming and system administration. 

Industry 4.0 is gaining traction as a result of fast advances in cyber-computing capabilities over the last two decades. Advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and others have shrunk the distance between the virtual and real worlds, allowing for the creation of an interoperable platform between information technology (IT) and actual physical activities. Industry 4.0 refers to the use of cyber-physical domains in conjunction with cutting-edge technologies such as AI, IoT, Cloud computing, AR, 3D printing, and others to boost productivity. Industry 4.0 is already having an impact on industries such as manufacturing, supply chain management, construction, and transportation, and it will continue to have an impact on many parts of our daily lives. It is widely regarded as a game-changing technology.

And that leads us to industry 4.0 which is really gotten its legs in the last 10 years and is really starting to accelerate in the last 2. Industry 4.0 takes what we learned in Industry 3.0 and applies it to our manufacturing business enterprise. If Industry 3.0 is the automation of manufacturing processes, Industry 4.0 is the automation of a manufacturing business. Automating the way you make your decision and execution. In order to achieve Industry 4.0, we need to get all of our nodes all of our machines, equipment, people, software, treat them as a node and get them plugged into an ecosystem. We call this the Industrial Internet of Things ecosystem. But in a sense, it is the ecosystem that enables the fourth industrial revolution to occur. 

The fourth industrial revolution, known as Industry 4.0, was sparked by technological advancements that connected cyber-physical systems, such as smart machines capable of exchanging real-time data via the industrial internet of things (IIOT) for decision-making. Industry 4.0 encompasses a wide range of modern technologies such as Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data science, 3D printing, 5G, Drones, and Communications, all of which are used to increase productivity in manufacturing operations.

Industry 4.0 Technology:

Over and above past human-machine interactions, real-time machine-machine communication is now conceivable. With the rise in processing capability of the chips, visualization and simulation tools have advanced significantly. Various complicated, configurable, and modular goods can be created and communicated directly to the machines that will follow. As a result, embedded systems, factories, and workers link through the Internet of Things to collaborate in a cyber-physical environment. When AI and IoT are combined with Industry 4.0, robots become more versatile and capable of making decisions in a manufacturing setting. We now have Cobots, or Collaborative Robots, that are intrinsically involved in human activities, and their role has evolved beyond that of stand-alone machines performing repetitive chores.

AR (Augmented Reality) is a step forward in the popular VR (Virtual Reality) technology. It is a hybrid of the real and digital worlds that has been combined to improve its virtual world applicability. Information is layered on the user's field of view with gadgets like Google Glass, allowing him to acquire greater insight into an object they are looking at (like technical parameters, tolerance limits, etc.).

Various cyber-physical systems work together in the Industry 4.0 concept to improve productivity by making corrective decisions on their own. To ensure continuous machine availability, a timely notice for human intervention is generated, informing the projected cause and likely maintenance necessary. The notion of distributed processing for routine activities with centralized decision-making using an analytics framework is heavily used in this application.

The cloud servers process the smart sensor data that comes from the cyber-physical systems. The AI analytics, which consists of mathematical models, run predictive algorithms on cloud servers to boost productivity and guide the production process. Industry 4.0 involves not only horizontal factory-to-factory connectivity but also vertical integration to connect a production line's hierarchies. Overall, the smart factory's intelligence is achieved through the convergence of information processing technologies as part of a digital ecosystem.

Indian Perspective:

The World Economic Forum established its Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in India in 2018 to collaborate with the Indian government. The World Economic Forum has appointed the National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog as the authorized nodal organization for designing new policy frameworks for emerging technologies. On a PPP (Public-Private-Partnership) model, the Government of India has already created the required policy framework and set up incentives for infrastructure development.

Udyog Samarth Bharat Under the Department of Heavy Industries (Ministry of Heavy Industries & Public Enterprises), 4.0 (Smart Advanced Manufacturing and Rapid Transformation Hubs) is India's initiative to push for Industry 4.0 implementation with the goal of propagating technological solutions to Indian manufacturing units by 2025 through steps such as awareness programmers, training, and demo centers. The government has created policies for industry, academia, and international cooperation in the realm of technology connected to Industry 4.0. India's National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) was recently announced, with the goal of increasing manufacturing's share of GDP to 25% by 2025, and Industry 4.0 is the only way to accomplish this goal.