Articles Tagged with ''Industry 4.0''

Rotor blades, guide vanes and other components for jet engines are made from costly materials and machined to precise tolerances. Such components are typically made in batches, due to the time involved in setting up machine centers. The process also requires a fair number of people to tend the machines and assist in changeover.

Meet The ASSEMBLY Show's Keynote Presenter, Charles Wetherington. Chuck is the President and COO of BTE Technologies, a manufacturer of hi-tech medical devices for physical rehabilitation. 

As assembly plants become more digitally connected to both suppliers and customers, the potential threat posed by cyberattacks will only get worse. Cyberthreats to manufacturers are real, and the consequences can be devastating.

In today’s smart factories, cyber physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual representation of the physical world, and even make decisions. The traditional structure of the automation pyramid and the distinction between information and operations technologies are blurring.

Assembly technology is wonderful, but it is not perfect. In some way, each technological process has a downside.

If the factory of the future will run on data, new types of hardware will be needed to collect, route, process and display it. That means more than just new PLCs, but gateways, edge computers, tablets and other hardware.

To get an idea of the importance of sensors to the factory of the future, head to upstate New York to General Electric’s sprawling assembly plant in Schenectady, NY, where the company makes sodium-nickel batteries for cell-phone towers and other applications.

If you think banks, insurers and credit card companies are the only enterprises that need worry about cybersecurity, think again.

As system designers and integrators navigate through Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI), it is clear that they must balance the best solution for the problem and plan for integration with existing infrastructure and processes.

You can’t accuse Volkswagen’s Dirk Voigt of having his head in the clouds—he’ll take it as a compliment. The head of digital production at VW, Voigt and a team of manufacturing and IT pros are developing an industrial cloud computing system to amalgamate production data from more than 120 factories. The objective: greater efficiency and lower costs.