Five trends that are changing industry

Initiatives like Smart Industry, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and Industry 4.0 are changing current business concepts within the industrial world. This Fourth Industrial Revolution is being driven mainly by five trends that have significant importance within our rapidly changing industrial environment.

Trend 1: Individualisation

Henry Ford stated that his customers could have any car colour as long as it was black. This would be impossible to consider in today’s world. Mass customisation and the demand for individually configured products has led to ‘lot size one’ production and increasingly sophisticated requirements for production machines and assembly lines.

Trend 2: Powerful hardware and affordable sensors

Automation hardware has become more and more powerful, but at the same price level. A modern PLC can run sophisticated control algorithms and process advanced data signals in real time, which would not have been possible 10 years ago. The first multicore processors are already in production use. Also, intelligent sensors have become so affordable that machine builders now integrate them in places it where it was economically impossible to a few years ago.

Trend 3: Sophisticated functionality (mainly in software)

The boost in hardware performance has allowed for more sophisticated machine functionality — mainly implemented in real-time software on PLCs and embedded controllers — where in the past, simple logical operations were performed. This advanced functionality is necessary to provide the flexibility needed for individualisation during the production process. Today’s production equipment has a lifespan of more than 20 years. During this time, these systems are rarely modified in order to avoid production loss; reconfiguration of individual machine modules is always a risky task. Digitalisation helps to establish a software platform and numerous functional modules, all implemented in software. Over the lifespan of production machines, the individual modules will most likely change entirely, while the mechanical skeleton stays the same. This is not a completely new concept; modern smartphones demonstrate how software is defining and changing a mechatronic system’s behaviour.

Trend 4: Data, data, data

Whether data is ‘the oil of the future’ or not is still debatable. However, data clearly is the fuel of algorithms. Advanced functions, for instance for predictive maintenance, need data in order to operate. The abundance of affordable sensor systems on modern production lines — and as a consequence, measured data — is key to running sophisticated functionality on a real-time system. In combination with increasingly powerful processor hardware capable of running powerful algorithms (for instance, machine learning or deep learning), data is the foundation of the ongoing industrial transformation.

Trend 5: Comprehensive (software) testing

Last but not least, advanced functionality requires comprehensive testing to avoid errors and costly service engineering in the field. While machine builders and industrial equipment suppliers have a long history of developing and testing mechanical structures and electronic components, software design is entirely new to a majority of them. Methods for early testing through simulation and virtual commissioning are becoming more and more popular (and necessary!).

All the trends mentioned above will likely have a major impact on the industry and change the industrial landscape; important players of today might potentially go out of business, providing others the chance to build on these trends and introduce new business models.

Image: ©wellphoto/Dollar Photo Club