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  • Writer's pictureShiva Prakash M C

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 4.0


Industry Revolution 4.0 is the subset of fourth industrial revolution which mainly concerns about industry and encompasses an areas which are not normally classified as industry. Industry 4.0 factories have machines which are augmented with wireless connectivity and sensors connected to a system, that can help in visualizing the entire production line and make decisions on its own. In essence, Industry 4.0 is a trend towards automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies such as cyber-physical systems (CPS), Internet of things (IOT), Industrial Internet of things (IIOT), Cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence.


The major determining factor of Industry 4.0 is the pace of change and correlation of speed aimed at technological development. As a result, the socio-economic and infrastructural transformations with human life will allow us to state a qualitative leap in the speed of development, which marks a transition of new era. The main aim of Industry 4.0 is to fulfill some of the drawbacks such as stability of the production, step wise investment and close connection with cyber security issue so that a new concept can be introduced in industrial manufacturing system.


Stages in the development of industrial manufacturing systems from manual work to Industry 4.0 can be presented as a path through four revolutions.


FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The first industrial revolution began in 18th century through the usage of steam power and mechanization of production, which brought the transition from manual work to the first manufacturing processes in textile industries and thereby increasing human productivity. Instead of weaving looms powered by muscles, the developments of steamship or steam-powered locomotives bought massive changes which helped in the movement of humans and goods at much faster rate.

SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The Second Industrial Revolution began in 19th century through the discovery of electricity and assembly line production, where Henry Ford took the idea of mass production and carried over these principles into automobile production which drastically altered it in the process. While the advancements in manufacturing and production technology enabled the widespread adoption of technological systems such as telegraphs and railroad networks, gas and water supply along with sewage systems resulting in an unprecedented movement of people and ideas culminating a new wave of globalization.

THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

While third industrial revolution was characterized by digitization with an introduction to microelectronics and automation, where a variety of products are manufactured on a flexible production lines with programmable machines. It brought forth the rise of electronics and telecommunications that opened the doors for space expeditions, research, and biotechnology. Since the introduction of these technologies, we were able to automate an entire production process without human assistance and known examples of this are robots that perform programmed sequences without human intervention.


FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

At present, we are in the fourth industrial revolution which was triggered by the development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The main idea is to exploit the potentials of new technologies and concepts such as availability and use of Internet and IOT, Integration of technical processes in companies and digital mapping for virtualization of real world. Besides being the natural consequence of digitization and new technologies, Industry 4.0 is a promising solution which could result in decrease of production costs, Logistic costs and Quality management costs by 10-30 percent.

However, the Industry 4.0 principles have been investigated by several aerospace companies and technologies have been developed in order to improve the productivity, where an upfront cost of automation cannot be justified. The Industry 4.0 concept is not limited just to the direct manufacturing in the company but also includes a complete value chain from providers to customers along with all the enterprise’s business functions and services. The Industry 4.0 is a specialization of the Internet of Things applied to the manufacturing/industrial environment which assumes a real-time data collection leading to the issue of handling and analyzing of huge data and cyber security.


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