Chance Industry 4.0: The fourth revolution – Reuters

Dusseldorf Industry 4.0 The fourth revolution in the production should be. The first was the mechanization of production in the 18th century, the second the electrification of production and the introduction of the assembly line at the end of the 19th century, the third incipient automation of production since the seventies – and the fourth revolution is now complete automation .

The IT merged it finally complete with the production. Physical and virtual worlds merge and create a new, networked and self-managing production and logistics, to the data sending the finished product. Today grab 80 percent of all innovations in production technology to the integration of information and communication technologies with the Mechanical Engineering, as the image of the future industry 4.0 of the Federal Ministry of Education notes.

The revolution is in full swing. Therefore, the nature of the industry 4.0 is also more evolutionary. The digitization of the production is a process, but now can rapidly accelerate new technology. These new technologies are grouped under the term cyber-physical system (CPS).

This CPS-Technology forms the backbone of the Smart Factory, in which the Production is scheduled to take place self-controlling. Basic building block of the CPS technology are embedded systems. Here, for example, microprocessors or RFID chips in devices, articles and materials are embedded. At the beginning of the production of the blank is a radio chip, called RFID tag (RFID stands for radio-frequency identification)

This blank is for intelligent workpiece. Cheeses may have knowledge of its production process and its purpose can be programmed. The blank white, what will become of him, what else needs to be worked on him, and when the next production step is pending. The RFID technology is indeed only a basic technology by many, but it makes clear what is at stake in the industry 4.0. Around networking

This development of networking is possible because the material is not only object gets, but features its own identity. The material itself is active and can be networked in principle with all other things. The IT company Cisco estimates that 50 billion objects and people will be linked through the Internet in 2020. The result is the Internet of Things. And therein lie the opportunities of digitization, says Olaf Sauer, who is engaged in at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation in Karlsruhe with automation. “The potential of digitization can only be achieved through better networking.”