According to MarketsandMarkets, the Internet of Things (IoT) in the industrial sector, has given rise to a new concept known as the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), also known as Industrial Internet or Industry 4.0. 

The manufacturing industry is looking for digital transformation services, solutions (or partnering with a leading IoT app development company) that deliver necessary intelligence and visibility to their existing process to optimize their operational efficiency.

Before doing a deep dive into the topic, let’s get started with Industry 4.0, its applications. 

What is Industry 4.0?

The Fourth Industrial Revolution represents a fundamental change in the way we live, work and relate to one another. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is about more than just technology-driven change; it is an opportunity to help everyone, including leaders, policy-makers, and people from all income groups and nations, to harness converging technologies in order to create an inclusive, human-centered future. (Courtesy: Weforum.org)

Industry 4.0 Applications Today

Despite some organizations in denial about Industry 4.0’s impact on manufacturing, many organizations have already started to impact their revenues with futuristic technology advancements. 

Some Industry 4.0 applications are IoT, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Advanced Robotics, AR/VR, AI, ML, Analytics etc. 

In manufacturing Industry 4.0 applications are used to

• Identify opportunities in the manufacturing space through digitization
• Optimize production and supply chain using IoT, mobile, web, and Cloud
• Manage machines using AI and ML
• Manage fleets using IoT devices 

Let’s discuss the application of Industry 4.0 solutions in manufacturing in detail.

Digitization 

Identifying the machine availability, idle state, running status, efficiency, product quality data in real-time is extremely critical for any shop floor supervisor/manager to meet the actual vs target to be produced for that day. 

Digitizing the process will help everyone on the shop floor to understand machine metrics accurately and achieve the day-to-day production goals. 

With the collection of data, tracking the overall equipment effectiveness is absolutely seamless for supervisors, operators, and plant managers. 

Track OEE with IoT and Mobile app

Capture and monitor the accuracy of sensitive data including extreme temperature, vibrations, pressure, energy meter reading in real-time with IoT devices to record and send threshold alerts to supervisors/plant managers through the mobile app to analyze every machine’s performance and efficiency. The data collected using OEE monitoring software will help in improving the overall productivity rate of the company. 

Monitor product counts using TV Dashboards 

Monitoring production in real-time is a challenge for most operators and digitizing the process with a TV Dashboard will help every operator track the number of products they produce on the machine. A production monitoring system helps operators keep a tab on the number of products to be manufactured for the day against what is expected. 

Allocate Jobs Dynamically for operators through dynamic job cards

Allocating jobs for operators manually and tracking their efficiency takes quite some time for supervisors and digitizing job card processes will enable supervisors to assign tasks seamlessly to operators on a shift, transfer tasks to others in the absence of an operator through automation and efficiently track each operator’s performance during different shifts.  

Track machine downtime/failure using Industrial IoT (Preventive Maintenance)

Tracking machine up-time and downtime is always challenging for operators. With the introduction of Industrial IoT solutions in the market, connecting IoT devices to machines has enabled operators with real-time up-time and downtime data, leading to analyzing machine performance seamlessly. Preventive Maintenance software helps operators and supervisors to track machine data on-the-go. Unplanned downtime and frequent repairs incur a lot of cost and prevention is extremely important to achieve improved RoI. 

Leverage data using a Predictive Maintenance system to foresee what’s coming

Tracking machine data and identifying machine downtime on-time could reduce the TCO to a great extent. Collecting the machine data for at least 5 years and analyzing the data with the help of a predictive maintenance system built using AI & ML will help your business eliminate unplanned downtime or unexpected machine failures and improve productivity. 

Having predictive maintenance software enables manufacturing companies to find out what will happen to the machines in the future and how you can prevent that. 

Many manufacturing companies have already started to leverage the power of Industry 4.0 solutions to improve their day-to-day operations and efficiency to meet the ever-evolving and growing customer needs, resulting in improved RoI. 

Industry 4.0 Use Case

Measuring shop floor data in real-time, including the machine and labour data is complex. The manufacturing plant managers access the machine and operator data manually. Measuring the overall production efficiency and preventing downtime is equally challenging in most circumstances. Lack of real-time data leads to increased overhead, production cost, and low productivity rate. This hinders their growth and beating the brimming competition. Simply put, the expectation for a “connected factory” fails miserably. 

With the help of a shop floor automation solution, achieving a connected factory is highly possible. Discover some of the ways Industry 4.0 solutions are used in manufacturing for improving RoI.