Requirements for Industry 4.0 — What is technically necessary?
The development towards Industry 4.0 is taking place in large steps. The economy and the companies have recognized the great opportunities behind it. But what is necessary to convert production into Industry 4.0? A stocktaking.
Scope of the vision Industry 4.0
In 2011, a working group developed the vision “Industry 4.0”. It describes the further development of modern production processes with the aim of ensuring that production is networked in the best possible way. As a result, production should control itself as far as possible and also optimize itself. All available data are to be used for optimization and control by exchanging them between the production participants. This also includes the products themselves, which report back the data of their life cycle and thus return findings to product development.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel presented this vision in her opening speech at the Hannover Messe 2013, thus ensuring broad support. Since then, efforts to implement Industry 4.0 have been steadily stepped up because of the obvious advantages. (Read also: What is Industry 4.0?)
But what is necessary to start with Industry 4.0?
Systems in manufacturing
Industry 4.0 primarily describes the vision of optimal industrial production. Every production follows fixed and repetitive workflows. The processes are controlled and guided by various instruments. The focus is on systems in which production data is managed. The most common systems in production environments are:
- ERP — Enterprise Resource Planning
- MES — Manufacturing Execution System
- LIMS — Laboratory Information Management System
- CMMS — Computerized Maintenance Management System
- EMS — Energy Management System
- SCADA — Supervision Control and Data Acquisition
- HMI — Human Machine Interface
- PLC — Programmable Logic Controller
Customer orders, material stocks and resource planning are managed in the ERP system. Everything that is to be produced, with which material input and at which costs, is defined here. In the ERP, the final release for a production order is given, after which it is actually produced.
Ideally, the production level is managed by a MES. Here, production orders from the ERP are enriched with machine-specific data so that machine recipes are created. In addition, machine data is recorded in order to calculate efficiencies, monitor consumption and conditions and to record and report any error situations.
In a LIMS, quality-relevant data on the products and manufacturing materials are stored and processed. Many production processes are dependent on and controlled by LIMS data.
The maintenance management system monitors the maintenance specifications of all machines and plant components in a production line and gives appropriate maintenance instructions in order to avoid breakdowns.
Energy management records and evaluates energy consumption so that energy-saving measures can be developed and monitored. Production methods are then adapted and, in case of doubt, even actively influenced in order to avoid peak consumption.
A SCADA system is used to monitor the production machines. Here, all process data can be viewed in real time and, if necessary, can be intervened in a controlling manner.
Directly at the machine, the HMI is the interface to the control system for the operator. The operator can control the operation of the machine and set production and machine parameters.
The actual machine is controlled by an intelligent module, the PLC. This is where the automation of the production process takes place.
Not all of these systems are necessary for the implementation of Industry 4.0, but only the existence of such systems makes the path towards Industry 4.0 possible. In the first steps towards Industry 4.0, the communications for the implementation of the production processes are digitized and automated. Sub-areas that are not digitized by corresponding systems must then be equipped with electronic user interfaces in order to integrate them.
Communication between systems
The most trivial and usually initially predominant communication between the production systems is the exchange of paper forms. An approved production order is printed out, brought into production and executed there. During and after completion of the order, data is manually added to the forms in order to document component consumption, quality parameters and finished goods quantities. The completed forms are then entered manually again in the ERP system. This is the worst system coupling imaginable. This method is:
- Time-consuming due to manual activities such as
- Print and Deliver
- Filling in the forms
- Reading data from the HMI and entering it into the ERP system
- Error-prone due to typos
- Ineffective due to delayed data availability
- Inflexible when changing data for orders, parameters, etc.
In order to implement Vision Industry 4.0, communication between existing systems must be digital. This allows data to be exchanged in real time. Expensive and error-prone manual processes are eliminated. In addition, new possibilities arise if the systems can request data depending on the situation and thus react to special conditions. If, for example, a raw material is unexpectedly unavailable, alternative production orders can be called up in order to avoid a production stoppage. If these processes occur semi-automatically or even completely automatically, the goal of self-controlling production can be achieved.
Communication between systems is a basic requirement for Industry 4.0.
Controls, Sensors, Actuators
The controls with their sensors and actuators are the ones that get the machine to produce the final product. The controllers are therefore an important system that must be supplied with data automatically in order to implement Industry 4.0. However, the controller must meet certain requirements for this. A pure machine controller for the automation of a production process in the form of “Industry 3.0” is designed to work autonomously. The data for production is entered by an operator at the HMI and then processed. For a production according to Industry 4.0, the programming of the PLC must have a digital supply with production orders and a corresponding interface for feedback. If this is not the default setting, the system programmer has to make improvements. This can vary depending on the complexity and degree of individualization of the machine. A series machine can possibly be provided with a software update, which the manufacturer makes available to all customers. An individual production machine must be reprogrammed by the respective programmer according to specially formulated requirements for the system coupling. For the general Industry 4.0 protocol “OPC UA”, many working groups are already busy making general specifications for such interfaces. These specifications are defined in the so-called “Companion Specifications” (What is OPC UA and the Companion Specs?).
In addition to the control systems, sensors are also increasingly capable of being addressed as independent systems. These provide data for monitoring, diagnosis and status analysis. If these are integrated into the respective systems, self-optimizations can be carried out, such as “predictive maintenance”, in which the maintenance requirement of a plant component is identified from the sensor data.
The intelligent and networkable sensor systems, as well as the PLC controls with their couplings to the real machine, are referred to as CPS (Cyber Physical System). Such CPS are an important component for Industry 4.0.
Connectivity
For Industry 4.0 communication, the networks must have connections that allow access according to precise rules using common mechanisms such as firewalls.
In the normal IT environment, networking is usually already in place. The communication between the systems must be created by appropriate rules and configurations of the standard-interfaces.
In the production network, there are often some areas where networking has not yet been established. Networking must then be built up fundamentally and the components with which communication is to take place must also be made network-compatible.
The technologies for networking here range from simple network cables via WLAN to RFID and 5G technologies.
Cloud
Is the cloud a necessary requirement for Industry 4.0? No. But it is the logical next step. The described steps towards Industry 4.0 through communication between systems are not limited to production. Further connections can be created via the cloud, enabling production to control and optimize itself.
One possible application is the product itself, which can report back its data to its own life cycle if it has sufficient technical equipment. The product reports its data to the cloud and the manufacturer can incorporate the data gained into the further development of the product or offer the necessary services for the product.
In addition to the product, customers and suppliers can also be integrated into the production process via the cloud in order, for example, to coordinate delivery processes in real time or optimize the supply of raw materials.
With the cloud, the idea of Industry 4.0 has an even wider sphere of influence.
The future of Industry 4.0
It is highly likely that the fourth industrial revolution will gain further momentum and gradually spread into all areas of industrial production. Socially, this will lead to major changes, as it did after the previous industrial revolutions. For consumers, there will always be better networked products with a high degree of individualization. As a result, factories will need fewer and fewer factory workers, but the demand for service and creative professions will rise sharply. From a technical point of view, more and more data will be exchanged faster and faster in order to realize optimal production.
