Industry 4.0, What is it?

This is one of the current hottest topics and nothing can be more hype than being on the verge of the next industrial revolution.

But as any other hype subject, everybody is talking about it, although with just a limited view about the subject and, consequently, a lot of noise is produced. We are sure it involves IT, Cloud Information... maybe Big Data Analysis and IoT, but most of the time we are not absolutely sure of what we are talking about when we use the term "Industry 4.0". 

Let me help you a little bit on that. 

Like any other story let's start from the beginning. The Industry 4.0 is a concept introduced by a German task force (composed by 5 working groups) working for the German Government, focused on developing a strategy for dramatically increasing the German Manufacturing Industry Competitiveness (no more no less than enabling the next step in industrial revolution). This strategy, the so called Industry 4.0, introduces the concept of Smart Factories, based on Cyber-physical systems integrated in the Internet of Things and supported by Cloud Computing. Basically it combines production methods with state-of-the-art information and communication technology. This will enable communication and cooperation between people and machines, providing digitally networked intelligent systems, that will make self-managing production processes possible.

Did you liked this teaser? Want to know more about Industry 4.0, its principles, challenges, impact,...? Than read all about it directly from the people who conceptualized it in the "Final Report of the Industry 4.0 Working Group"

https://www.acatech.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Baumstruktur_nach_Website/Acatech/root/de/Material_fuer_Sonderseiten/Industrie_4.0/Final_report__Industrie_4.0_accessible.pdf