February 20208 MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTSIN MY OPINIONBy Hector Barresi, Director - Industrial Automation Business, IMI Precision EngineeringWhen Charles Chaplin filmed Modern Times back in 1936, he brilliantly portrayed the revolutionary "efficiencies" of modern industrialization that characterized the Industry 2.0 era. The use of electricity, mass manufacturing, continuous assembly lines, and hundreds of workers loading, operating and unloading the machines marked the industrial revolution. At the time, process automation was nonexistent, the quality was unpredictable, efficiency was weak, and health and safety conditions were less than desirable.With Process Automation, robots, and IT, the world entered the Industry 3.0 era, which was characterized by significant improvements in productivity, efficiency, quality, and safety. Sensors, Control Systems, and Automatic Control Valves produced substantial operational improvements across all industries. Process Optimization came later to provide yet another boost in productivity, quality, and predictability.As microprocessors, memories, and batteries became smaller, more powerful and affordable, more intelligence has been built into industrial field devices, such as sensors and valves, as well as on machines. Besides, the emergence of potent Edge and Cloud computing, the Internet of Things and advanced industrial networks, have enabled the capture, sharing, and analysis of massive amounts of data. This data is then analyzed and processed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications supported by Augmented Reality (AR) representations.The transformation of (the once) stand-alone field devices and machines into interactive members of the factory eco-system and the effective use of data for more efficient operations mark the beginning of the Industry 4.0 era and the Smart Factory.The benefits and progress that Industry 4.0 will drive will span over every single aspect and area of a Smart Factory. Manufacturing processes and Supply Chain will experience tremendous incremental improvements as the result of transforming the plants into intelligent networks of cybernetic physical systems that share with robust computer systems to drive tighter control and more creative and effective decisions and actions.The Smart FactorySmart Factories will operate much more efficiently, with tighter quality control, fewer accidents, and pollution, and the manufacturing lines will be more flexible. Non-manufacturing industries like power generation will also benefit from better turbine condition predictability, remote monitoring, and smart grids.Uptime: Maximizing uptime and minimizing downtime have been significant concerns in the industry for years. Machine The Evolution of the Smart FactoryHector Barresi
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