Industry 4.0 for dummies
Filippo Passante
Operating Unit Manager, Italy, Business Unit Grid Integration at Hitachi Energy
There’s a place where you can touch with hands the application of Industry 4.0 in a very easy and funny way.
As most already knows, Industry 4.0 concept is based on nine “pillars”:
- Advanced manufacturing solutions: flexible, high performance, interconnected and modular production systems such as robots and collaborative robots
- Additive manufacturing: production systems that increase the efficiency in raw material usage such as 3D printers connected to digital modeling software
- Augmented Reality: use of VR headset systems to support production processes
- Simulation: simulation run by IA clusters to increase productivity and processes optimization
- Horizontal and vertical integration: data and information integration across all the production flow and from the supplier to the end consumer
- Industrial internet: internal and external internet communication between the different stages of production process
- Cloud: deployment of cloud computing and data management solutions for open systems
- Cyber-security: new security standards for data protection for highly vulnerable internal and external interconnections
- Big Data Analytics: IA deployment for huge data analysis to optimize production processes
What is not so common is the possibility to know firsthand the application of this concept in a very easy and smart way.
This happens to me during my visit to the Smart Lab, located in the ABB’s Dalmine Factory, near Bergamo - Italy.
ABB Smart Lab is a demonstrator of technologies made in cooperation with Politecnico di Milano University where real products and systems from all ABB Divisions and for all applications are connected using public and private networks.
Here I got a nice experience of at least six enablers (the pillars) of Industry 4.0; during my visit, indeed, I’ve been invited to:
- to put my signature on a tablet…
- …this signature has been sent to the cloud through internet (Industrial Internet, Cloud)…
- …it has been processed (Cyber Security, Big Data Analytics – ok, not so big data, I agree, but let stick on the principle)…
- …and it has been sent to the collaborative robot Yumi that has replicated my signature on paper (Advanced Manufacturing Solutions) by using appropriate “fingers” manufactured by a 3D printing process (Additive Manufacturing).
In the below video you can see the final phase of this process:
This funny demonstration has also been my first encounter with YuMi, ABB’s innovative two-arm collaborative robot. YuMi is conceived for a new era of automation, where men and robots can work side by side carrying out the same tasks and activities, thanks to the intrinsic safety of the robot that don’t need protective barriers to operate.
But ABB Smart Lab is definitively more: it’s a powerful tool where you can experience:
- Load shedding demonstrator
- Integrated PV production, storage, EV charging, home automation
- Microgrids
- Remote monitoring of plants, of naval fleets of EV charging station, of robots, complete robotic cells or complete production plant
- Fault simulator for Smart Grids
…with real live equipment’s in a very safe way. Definitively a nice experience!