
This piece first appeared first on the official blog of RAD.
Summary Bullets:
- IoT’s role in Industry 4.0 isn’t about making connectivity or sensors smarter. It’s about making an enterprise’s operations smarter, integrating advanced control and automation capabilities by connecting industrial assets.
- Increasingly, that means updating and connecting existing industrial control systems, with the promise of further automating thousands of operational endpoints.
- Top Industry 4.0 applications include basic on/off commands and security functions.
- Optimization of processes and of productivity is the main benefit that manufacturers see.
Is the Internet of Things (IoT) getting smarter? That is often how ‘Industry 4.0’ is described as digital technology is deployed in production or other industrial processes to take advantage of advanced platforms and devices (including analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence). Differing from machine-to-machine (M2M) solutions that use network connectivity simply to monitor the condition or location of an object, Industry 4.0 goes further to describe applications which actually control or operate connected things via networked connectivity. While sometimes the connected ‘thing’ refers to newer machines and devices such as robots, autonomous guided vehicles (AGV), or augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) headsets worn by industrial workers, the ‘thing’ might also refer to core production equipment that has been installed for decades. Either way, the aims of Industry 4.0 remain the same: connecting machines to provide essential information and insights to allow companies to make smarter decisions, automate processes, and reach specific ROI goals related to efficiency and cost control. Continue reading “Industry 4.0 and the Promise of Smarter Operations Using IoT”
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