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Industry 4.0 and applications
1. INDUSTRY 4.0 AND APPLICATIONS
Umang Tuladhar
utuladhar@oakland.edu
2. 1
Contents
The evolution of Industrial revolution................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Introduction to INDUSTRY 4.0............................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Benefits...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Digital Twin............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4
Technologies for Industry 4.0................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)..................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Software ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
AR Technology – Lightguide (error proofing – SWI enforcement)................................................................................................................ 6
Additive Manufacturing....................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS)...................................................................................................................................................... 6
Robot and Cobots................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Ideal scenario of application of Industry 4.0: SMART FACTORY ..................................................................................................................... 7
Application of Industry 4.0 technology................................................................................................................................................................ 9
Light Guide Systems............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9
Behco-MRM: .......................................................................................................................................................................................................10
Challenges...............................................................................................................................................................................................................11
Efforts at Educational institutions......................................................................................................................................................................12
3. 2
The evolution of Industrial revolution
The industrial revolution is believed to have started from 1784 with the introduction of power loon. The period was marked for a
series of improvements in the field of textile industries. The timeline below shows the evolution of the changes with the advent of
technological breakthroughs.
Industry 1.0 Industry 2.0 Industry 3.0 Industry 4.0
• Mechanization of
equipment
• Steam/Hydro power
• Mass production
• Electrical power
• Division of labor
• Introduction of assembly
line
• Manufacturing
Automation
• Electronic and IT system
• Development of PLC
• Internet of Things
• Cyber Physical Systems
• Cloud computing
• Embedded intelligence
• Advanced Manufacturing
Technology
As the industrial revolution starts to progress through time, the level of complexity in terms of the technology involved also got more
and more complex.
1784 1870 1969 Present
4. 3
Introduction to INDUSTRY 4.0
There is a necessity to synthesize new ways of thinking and working in an industrial environment to achieve success in the new era of
industrial revolution. These changes should be incorporated by the Information Technology (IT) and Operation Technology (OT) in a
collaborative environment. According to Automation Alley, Michigan’s Industry 4.0 knowledge center, there is a collection of emerging
technology sectors that facilitates the transformation of any industry into a “smart industry”; they are listed as follows:
• The Industrial Internet of Things
• Big Data
• Robotics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Additive Manufacturing & Advanced Materials
• Modeling, Simulation, Visualization & Immersion
• Cloud Computing
• Cybersecurity
Benefits
Major industries all over the world are planning on investing more and more on infrastructure required to implement industry 4.0 in
their enterprise for a reason. The potential of growth by implementing IIOT is predicted to generate $12 trillion of global GDP by 2030.1
• Enhanced Customization/ Flexible Manufacturing (interactive customization and ideal batch size)
• Better Productivity/Throughput
• Better Quality/Minimal Error
• Improved worker safety
• Data transparency/Better decision making
1
Daugherty, Paul; Negm, Walid; Banerjee, Prith; Alter, Allan. "Driving Unconventional Growth through the Industrial Internet of Things" (PDF). Accenture.
Retrieved 17 March 2016.
5. 4
Digital Twin
A digital twin is simply an accurate mockup or a model of a product, plant or process. There exists a myriad of software that can be
used to build or develop a digital twin. For example, there are 3d modeling software such as Solid works, NX, Solidedge, Catia and so
on that is not only capable of creating a model but also performing simulation and analysis such as FEA and CAE. Also, there are
software such as Arena and Plant simulation that can model an entire plant and run simulations do generate important data and/or
reports that would come in handy in decision making phase. Software such as Process Simulate and Jack simulation has the capability
of simulating the operations carried out in a work environment that involves robots and/or human.
The significance of a digital twin is the power to test, simulate, validate and optimize a product, process or a plant. Having valuable
data and reports help to answer difficult questions regarding quality of product, throughput of the process, bottleneck within a system
and many more. This is the reason for the rapid growth in the field of digital twin. Consequently there is a significant growth if purchase
of software used for creating these digital mockups.
Expected Digital Twins market growth
according to a study published in June
2018. Reaching 15B$ in 2023. Credit:
Market Research Future
Fig: Digital twin of an assembly line with
following features:
• Completely automated with 10
autonomous working cell
• 40 Product variants can be
assembled
• Only 3 people needed to run the line
Source: “Assembly line concept phase” - Stefan
Richthammer (2018)
6. 5
Technologies for Industry 4.0
Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)
IIOT is a part of Internet of Things (IOT). It is defined as a network of physical devices, vehicles, electronic appliances embedded with
electronics, sensors, actuators and software to establish a connection that allows exchange of information, enables control and
nurture an environment for optimization. This is not a new concept to the world. People in the twenty-first century are well aware of
what a smart device such as a smartphone or a smart TV is capable of. The smart TV can easily be controlled using a smart phone.
Moreover, devices such as Google home and Home pod has the capability of connecting all the smart devices via internet connection
and provides the end user the power of control over those devices. This is known as IOT. The same technology can be used, in a
manufacturing plant, to communicate with the machines, equipment and robots within a production plant with the same objective of
control and data acquisition.
Software
There is a myriad of software in the market that can do same thing but only differs in some features and capability. The table below
shows some of the Siemens software and their major purpose.
Software Functions/Features
Plant Simulation Modeling of discrete and continuous processes, Model
Visualization, Simulating and analyzing system performance as
experiments,
Process Simulate Static and dynamic collision detection, Sequencing of operations,
Assembly and robotic path planning, PLC code generation,
Human operations ergonomic analysis
NX Product design, Process planning, Simulation/Validation
Teamcenter Model visualization, Documentation, BOM management, Change
management, PDM
Simatic, TIA
portal
Automation system control, PLC programming
7. 6
AR Technology – Lightguide (error proofing – SWI enforcement)
The technology that allows real time integration of digital information with the real world to create a virtual environment that is
interactive in nature. In an industrial working environment, the goals of AR technologies are
o Error-proofing
o Improving productivity
Additive Manufacturing
The process of joining materials to make objects from 3D model data, usually layer
upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing methodologies. This technology
is often synonymous to 3D printing, which has been a buzzword for quite a while in
manufacturing industry. Although a slow and expensive process, it is highly accurate
and cost-effective process. The parts can be designed to drastically reduce material
used, which is demonstrated by the picture of a manifold. Same part manufactured
by subtractive method cannot have such a mesh structure. It would not be cost
effective.
Automatic Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS)
AGVS are automated vehicles used in factory or warehouse with the intent to increase efficiency and decrease cycle time. Common
applications of AGVS are;
• Material, WIP, product handling
• Trailer loading
• Roll handling
• Container handling
Although AGVS has been in use for a long period of time, the power of IIOT and embedded intelligence can tremendously enhance its
capability. Once the digital twin of a facility is ready, path for the AGVS can be planned and simulated to retrieve valuable data for
analysis. The figure below shows the path planning on a layout for AGVS on a plant.
8. 7
Robot and Cobots
Industrial robotics has been replacing human beings for non-ergonomic tasks
to decrease processing time, eliminate fatigue and human input in dangerous
working environment. Robots have performed well in monotonous operations
in an isolated environment. But researches has shown that human-robots
collaboration are found to be 85% more productive 2 compared to human or
robot alone. Hence, new robots are developed with embedded intelligence that
are capable of working in a collaborative environment where the robot is not a
threat to the safety of the worker. These are called cobots. Both robots and
cobots have their own advantages, and the cobots are developed to uncover
new opportunity of automation.
Challenges
Although Industry 4.0 seems to have the capability to solve a lot of industry related problem, reduce production cost, increase
profitability and worker safety, there are lots of hindrances in implementing of Industry 4.0 such as;
• Cyber security
• Lack of adequate skill-sets
• Lack of infrastructure
• Unclear legal issues and data security
• Loss of many jobs to automatic processes
• Excessive investment without unclear economic benefits
• Lack of regulation, standard and forms of certifications
• Insufficient qualification of employees
• Lack of ability to handle the volume, velocity and variety of Big data
2
Source: MIT research data on Financial Times article “Meet the cobots: humans and robots together on the factory floor” – 5 May 2016.
Fig: Possible shared workspace of a human and a
robot.
9. 8
Ideal scenario of application of Industry 4.0: SMART FACTORY
The industries of the future will be characterized by interconnectivity and autonomy that yields maximum productivity with minimum
human input. This will be done in a safe shared collaborative workspace designed for human and robots to work together. It is known
that human-robots collaboration are found to be more productive compared to human or robot alone. The IIOT network facilitates
connection and communication between manufacturing equipment as well as humans equipped with sensors and/or actuators. The
interconnection allows IT department, managers and decision makers to get hold of immense amount of data that will be analyzed to
aid decision making. The data will be transparent and decentralized. For example a General Manager who has left the country can still
access data on his smart devices like phone or laptop and still make and communicate his/her decisions to the
colleagues/departments.
10. 9
Application of Industry 4.0 technology
Light Guide Systems
This innovative company provides customized solutions to companies relative to Augmented Reality. They provide tools that works as
visual aid and visual control which results in reduced errors and improvements in manufacturing processes. The tools has been applied
in automobile, medical and electronic companies to for manufacturing, assembly, packaging, sterilization and training. The features
of the tools are listed below;
o Project color-coded, animated light beams and visual prompts in the form of text, symbols, graphics, blueprints or video on
any workstation or off-line training area.
o Guide operators through tasks and confirm that each step was properly completed.
o Automatically record production times, leading to real-time data and analytics.
o Error-proof operations, despite increased part variation in the assembly line.
o Run continuously in nearly any industry or assembly environment.
11. 10
Behco-MRM:
A case study provided by Mike Folster, robotics product manager at Behco-MRM, gives an insight to the capability of the cobots in a
manufacturing scenario. The case study demonstrates how using a 6-axis robot integrated with 3D machine vision system can increase
the profitability of the company.
Case study: The objective of the study is to prove that implementing the cobots in a manufacturing facility increases profitability on
the long run. It also solves the loss caused due to absenteeism of the employee. The company is a medium sized manufacturing
company that operates 5 days a week for 2 shifts per day. The initial setup is the workers handling all the tasks and the improvement
made is developing a collaborative environment with no extra safety. The costing assumption at the initial context is $40,000/yr per
shift.
Implementation of the cobots: The Company has two choices to install and integrate the cobots;
1. Traditional Integration where Behco-MRM handles the operations of installing the cobots and automating the process. Behco-
MRM would be providing extensive services to incorporate the solutions.
2. Self-Directed Integration where the company purchases the hardware and software and implement it by themselves.
In both the cases Behco-MRM will be working with the company in planning phase and also will be supporting the company during
and after the installation.
Costs and Findings: The cost of the hardware and robots are listed in the table below;
Hardware Cost ($)
45,000.00 CB3 UR10 Cobot
5,000.00 Mounting and EOAT hardware
5,000.00 @D vision System and Hardware
5,000.00 Program Robot and Devices
12. 11
Financial Analysis
Then the financial analysis done for 5 years shows that the traditional integration takes 1 year to source and deploy with a payback
calculated at 3.5 years with a total benefit of $260,000 over the use of labor only. Also, self-directed deployment takes days to deploy
with payback in 9 months and a total benefit of $480,000.
Year Direct Labor Traditional
Integration
Self-Directed
0 $80,000 $80,000 $60,000
1 $80,000 $200,000 0
2 $80,000 0 0
3 $80,000 0 0
4 $80,000 0 0
5 $80,000 0 0
TOTAL $540,000 $280,000 $60,000
13. 12
Efforts at Educational institutions
According to the World Economic Forum, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely
new job types that currently do not exist. Hence, the educational institutions should gradually change the content of the course so
that the students can sustain when the change occurs in the future.
The engineering department at Oakland University has been very active in training students for the change so that they can perform
once they enter the working environment. Oakland University has incorporated courses that educate students about the state-of-art
technologies that are being developed today for the future. For example, several courses that teaches students different Product
Lifecycle Management) PLM software such as Plan Simulation, Process Simulate, TIA portal and Teamcenter are introduced recently.
After completion of the course, students have good understanding of concepts of PLM, automation, digital twin, simulation and
analysis.
The courses are not just limited to classes, but there are projects to be completed that requires students to have a clear understanding
of the key concepts aforementioned. Most of the courses have projects that revolve around the Conveyor system in the CIM lab of
Engineering Center. The pictures below shows the actual conveyor system and the digital twin of the same.