Advanced Manufacturing will give suppliers and customers many benefits -- but the benefits aren't the technology. Discover the main reasons Industry 4.0 will be better in the future.

1. Industry 4.0? What’s the Big Deal?
(in 30 seconds please)
I travel around North America frequently to introduce the current state —
and likely short-term trajectory — of advanced manufacturing technologies
to educators and policy makers. These are the people that are going to
design, instruct, and financially support the next generation skilled
professionals that will be the ‘makers’ of the future.
A lot of these folks aren’t immersed or have deep personal experience with
manufacturing operations, so they rely on articles written in the general
press for information — they aren’t reading the technical trade publications
focussed on manufacturing or software topics. This is the clue that they
don’t want all the tiny details; they just want to know why its important, in
the shortest amount of time, so they can be convinced to fund, teach, or
design an educational manufacturing program for their community.

2. In general, two main questions come up during our discussions. The first
concerns the terminology of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Industrial
Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 and how they are related. Are
they different? Are they the same? I took a stab at explaining how I view
these topics last year here IoT vs Industry 4.0
The second question is this:
What’s the benefit of Industry 4.0?
This is actually a really insightful question that can trip up those caught up
in the details of the technologies. I know it did for me and it took a while for
me to come up with my particular viewpoint. The trouble is that often a
dozen ‘benefits’ are rattled off in no particular order that just really don’t
sound like benefits to the layperson (and really aren’t when you think about
it). It’s more like the geek’s guide to cool technologies.
To me, the best short, single answer requires you to know from which
perspective the question is being asked:
From the Consumer Perspective: The biggest benefit is that you will be
able to order single piece items (in German I4.0 speak: “Lot Size One”)
configured to your needs, without additional costs since automated
machinery will be producing it. This is a clear benefit and it doesn’t take
much imagination to visualize how receiving a completely personalized
product is better than a mass designed and produced one.
From the Manufacturers Perspective: The answer is twofold:
First the opportunity to grab market share from the consumers demands
above, of course.
Second, to finally have the technology to make useful information out of the
large amounts of available data to provide the long sought after (but
strangely elusive) goal of establishing an effective Predictive
Maintenance program. This is the practice of eliminating costs by reducing
both machine downtime (caused by equipment failure) and the unnecessary
preventative maintenance that is currently used to, well, prevent that from
happening.

3. Industry 4.0 includes the concepts of machine to machine (M2M)
communication and equipment that has the ‘smarts’ to determine its
own machine health to make predicative maintenance a reality. These
savings go directly to the bottom line, so you can bet they will be
implemented fast — and is also a clear and obvious benefit (and not simply a
feature).
So in my mind, those are the answers in the proverbial nutshell. It allows
the layperson to understand the importance of the Industry 4.0 and
appreciate what it could means for the future of manufacturing, especially in
the US.
Contact me if you would like to discuss and feel free to share the post with
those that might be interested.
Mike Nager
Making accessible the concepts of Industry 4.0 and Advanced Manufacturing to educators,
laypeople and the industrial controls industry.
Jan 9, 2018