Industry 4.0: What businesses need to know
By Barclay Ballard for ITProPortal: In order for businesses to prepare for Industry 4.0, they first need to understand the technological driving forces behind it, including the Internet of Things. Although mainstream examples of IoT devices are relatively limited at the moment, in the future connected objects are expected to revolutionise a whole host of business sectors. In the same way that new manufacturing processes brought about huge upheaval during the Industrial Revolution, the Internet of Things is also predicted to bring wholesale changes to industry.
“The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been described as a crucial step in the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0,” explains Martyn Williams, managing director of industrial automation software expert, COPA-DATA UK. “Using IoT technology, organisations are developing smarter infrastructures and building connected networks across entire manufacturing processes.”
Some of the key changes predicted to emerge as the Internet of Things is adopted by industrial firms include the following: Cont'd...
Four Points You Need to Consider when Thinking About Automating or Robotizing Your Operations
If your products have regular and stable characteristics, hard automation makes sense. If however each product is different, flexible automation or robotics should be favored.
Japan Embracing Industry 4.0 And IoT To Leap Into Next Industrial Automation
The challenge ahead is that not only manufacturing technologies will change drastically but the whole business environment, in which Japan may have to strive to overcome other than IoT super next generation automation.
UK 'risks losing out in Industry 4.0 race'
By PRW: A leading trade body has warned that a lack of government planning was threatening the UK’s position at the forefront of Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution.
A number of plastics companies in the UK and on the Continent have begun to develop products and processes that take into account developments in and around Industry 4.0 – also known as the ‘Internet of Things’.
However research conducted by manufacturers’ organisation the EEF found that while 91% of companies surveyed believed that internet access was as important to their business as electricity and water supplies more than half reckoned connectivity was inadequate for the future.
While the awareness of how important the internet was to a company’s operation was seen as a positive, the EEF highlighted that poor digital connectivity may prove to become a drag on future growth.
Many companies were already having to pay a premium to ensure they had high-speed access, the trade body said. Cont'd...
Buildings Manufactured From A 3D Printer
With the flexibility of construction, 3D buildings will allow architects to dream up all sorts of extraordinary edifices that would be too difficult or too expensive to build, using traditional methods. A 3D-printed building would not need to coincide with our traditional ideas of what a building looks like.
Smart Factories Need Smart Machines
Industry 4.0 Smart Factories and Smart Machines continue to drive dramatic efficiency improvements across the supply chain, within the factory and inside machines.
3D printing software, sensors, and carbon nanotubes among top Advanced Materials trends of 2016
By Kira for 3ders.org: The first month of 2016 is now behind us, and the year is shaping up to be particularly interesting in terms of 3D printing trends. In the advanced materials sector specifically, emerging technologies firmLux Research has predicted that the top three ‘undercover’ advanced materials trends of 2016 include improved 3D printing software and formats, Carbon nanotube products, and IoT devices embedded with sensing materials. Cont'd...
Five Reasons Why Manufacturers Are Embracing IoT
The Internet of Things (IoT) is enabling manufacturers to be more efficient, productive and profitable in the face of increased competition worldwide. We look at five reasons why manufacturers are betting big on these new technologies.
Three Things to Do Before Operating Your New Automated Equipment
Youre getting impatient to turn the main switch "on" to benefit from the enhanced productivity that it will give you. Before doing that, we recommend a few actions that should be completed before running at full production speed.
Boy, do Fanuc and Cisco have a deal for your factory
Fanuc and Cisco Systems are set to commercialize a technology this summer that promises glitch- and disruption-free factory operations. The Internet of Things-based system monitors machinery and spots signs of possible abnormalities so that parts can be replaced more smoothly and without affecting operations.
A one-minute suspension at a car factory generally costs around 2 million yen ($16,900). If, for example, a gear breaks and operations are halted for 60 minutes to replace it, the costs would be 120 million yen. Frequent line stoppages could also affect product quality.
The Fanuc-Cisco system uses sensors attached to each robot carrying or welding parts to monitor temperatures, vibration and other conditions. Data streams are sent via the Internet. A computer analyzes the data and decides which parts will likely need fixing and when. The system also places orders for replacements. The accuracy of the system's prediction and analysis functions will increase as data accumulates, representatives from the companies said. Cont'd...
Is Velo3D Plotting a 3-D Printed Robot Revolution?
Tekla S. Perry for IEEE Spectrum: Velo3D, based in Santa Clara, Calif., has $22.1 million in venture investment to do something in 3-D printing: That makes it fourth among 2015’s best-funded stealth-mode tech companies in the United States, according to CB Insights. This dollar number is about all the hard news that has come out of this startup, founded in 2014 by Benyamin Butler and Erel Milshtein. But job postings, talks at conferences, and other breadcrumbs left along Velo3D's development trail—has created a sketchy outline of this company’s plans.
Consider which 3-D printing technology is ready for disruption: metal. 3-D printing of plastics took off after 2009, when a key patent that covered the deposition technology expired; we now have desktop printers for 3-D plastic objects as cheap as $350. Printing of metal objects—done regularly in industry, particularly aerospace—uses a different, and, to date, far more expensive technology: selective laser sintering. This technology melts metal powders into solid shapes; it requires high temperatures, and far more complicated equipment than what’s found in the layering sort of printers used for plastic. The patent for this technology expired in early 2014—just before the formation of Velo3D. At the time, industry experts indicated that there wouldn’t be cheap metal printers coming anytime soon, but rather, would only come after “a significant breakthrough on the materials side,” OpenSLS’s Andreas Bastian told GigaOm in 2014. Could Velo3D’s founders have that breakthrough figured out? Cont'd...
Volvo Construction Equipment Digs Up Prototype Savings Of 18 Weeks And 92% Of Costs
Since 3D printing the prototype cost $770 and took only two weeks, including both design and development, VCE completed its testing much sooner than traditional methods would have allowed.
U.S. official sees more cyber attacks on industrial control systems
Jim Finkle for Reuters: A U.S. government cyber security official warned that authorities have seen an increase in attacks that penetrate industrial control system networks over the past year, and said they are vulnerable because they are exposed to the Internet.
Industrial control systems are computers that control operations of industrial processes, from energy plants and steel mills to cookie factories and breweries.
“We see more and more that are gaining access to that control system layer," said Marty Edwards, who runs the Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT.
ICS-CERT helps U.S. firms investigate suspected cyber attacks on industrial control systems as well as corporate networks.
Interest in critical infrastructure security has surged since late last month when Ukraine authorities blamed a power outage on a cyber attack from Russia, which would make it the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. Cont'd...
Thoughts turn to revolution in Davos
By Matthew Allen for SWI: Intelligent robots and drones, 3D printers, self-driving vehicles, data mountains, smart production lines, fintech and blockchain – the fourth industrial revolution is here. The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Davos meeting will ponder the potential, limitations and societal impacts of “Industry 4.0”.
Will the transformation of the workplace create jobs or unemployment? Will it close the gap between industrialised and developing economies, rich and poor - or widen it? For Swiss firms, can the new technological revolution ease the pressures of the strong franc?
Speaking ahead of the annual meeting in Davos, WEF founder Klaus Schwab called on world leaders to revise policies to accommodate the coming changes. “We are not yet sufficiently prepared for this fourth industrial revolution that will come over us like a tsunami and will change whole systems,” he said.
“My fear is that if we are not prepared we will create a world where particularly the middle class is frozen out. That would lead to a new problem of social exclusion that we absolutely have to avoid.” Cont'd...
New Ultrasonic 3D Printing Process Can Create and Print High-Tech Composite Materials
Scott J Grunewald for 3DPrint.com: A team of engineers from the University of Bristol — comprising Thomas M. Llewellyn-Jones, Bruce W. Drinkwater and Richard S. Trask — have developed a new hybrid type of 3D printing that can both assemble and print with composite materials using a combination of desktop 3D printer technology, light-curable resins and ultrasonic waves. This new process can allow super strong and lightweight composites like the variety used to produce tennis rackets, golf clubs, professional bicycles or even airplane parts to be used with additive manufacturing technology. Needless to say these new material options will offer entire new industries the ability to incorporate 3D printing into their manufacturing workflow. And the best part is that for the most part the process was made using existing 3D printing technology.
Composite materials are made by combining micro-structures of glass or carbon fibers with a plastic material. The carefully arranged fibers lock together and give the new material its strength and durability, while the plastic ensures that the resulting material will be lightweight. Currently, composite materials are manufactured as thin sheets that are then layered and cut into the desired shape and thickness. The problem with using this as a 3D printing material is the small fibers in the composite materials. In order to produce the desired strength the fibers need to be aligned in a very precise structure, which is currently not possible to reproduce using a 3D printer. Cont'd.. .
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