Past Present and Future of Industry 4.0

摘要

Industry 4.0 is a widely discussed subject in these days; yet is a concept in progress, as it represents a very early stage of a technology leap that is already happening and will fully develop over the next decade. One view is to consider it as the impact of full digitalization in the industrial environment. In this work, we review the historical references to Industry 4.0, drawing also a parallel with the early days of the Internet. We link them to the wide array of digital tools already available in the industrial automation market, that include diverse digital communication protocols, integration of industrial control system ICS with enterprise resource planning systems ERP, customer-supplier integrated purchasing systems, etc. We wonder that while some of these tools are new, others have been available already for years. For what reason the use and implementation of these techniques has not yet become widely available? Even worst, most of the experiences are not successful, fact evidenced by the limited application of the installed systems, few years after the start up. We concluded that the reason is a wrong focus in technology: vendors are focused in providing technology and at the same time customers also focused in technology. Hence, the technology is delivered but not always results in the expected gains of productivity. To change the situation, we propose to move the focus from technology to maintenance and calibration processes review. Our proposal is to start by reviewing the final user maintenance and calibration processes, by creating an “AS IS” scenario. Then a “TO BE” scenario is developed, and the digital tools become part of the new scenario. This improvement leverages from Lean methodologies like Business Process Excellence. To evaluate the impact of this changes, we analyze an actual user case, where this process was applied with a reduction of 50% in the maintenance cycle of an instrument. Finally, we speculate on the evolution of these techniques, that could lead to “measurement as a service” services, outcome based services, big data techniques applied on calibration, and improved temperature calibration process with “always available calibration certificates” without manual calibration processes.