An industrial leader with 30 years of experience will explain Industry 4.0 in detail for you

The Industry 4.0 trend is not new. In 2016, many governments realized that transforming the industrial sector through Industry 4.0 principles would help close the productivity gap. In EMEA in particular, Industry 4.0 initiatives have provided incentives in the following areas:

• Invest in advanced Industry 4.0 technologies

• Perform relevant research and development

• Improve knowledge and understanding of Industry 4.0 in factories as well as in schools and universities

Solutions-oriented semiconductor company Analog Devices has seen an increase in requests for Industry 4.0-related technologies, such as condition-based monitoring and industrial Ethernet.

Despite government-led implementation of Industry 4.0 practices, the industrial sector faces the same opportunities and risks as companies in developed economies. Manufacturers cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and risk losing their first-mover advantage. At the same time, they cannot make large investments that may quickly become obsolete and never provide a return on investment.

The transition to Industry 4.0 is more than just specifying and installing equipment or even building a new factory: it fundamentally affects the way manufacturing companies operate. In particular, manufacturers need to expand their expertise in areas such as software, security, and IT, which will require them to make difficult trade-offs and choices about where to invest, who to work with, and how to ensure organizational flexibility.

We expect the factory connectivity backbone to be a deterministic Ethernet. Although a mix of industrial Ethernet protocols are in use today, standardizing on the Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) Ethernet protocol would be of great benefit to industry. Manufacturers should specify TSN-ready solutions and other enhancements along the roadmap to ensure that network investments are part of a long-term plan.

• Repetitive tasks are now performed by collaborative robots. These smaller robots work in collaboration with humans. While the traditional large-scale industrial robotics industry remains healthy and growing, the newer collaborative robot market is in its early stages of development.

• An architecture dominated by rigid and centralized control is being replaced by a decentralized, flexible factory floor. Here, robots work together with many other systems, including PLC controllers and a large number of sensors and actuators. These machines or devices are designated as inputs or outputs. An Analog Devices innovation—software-configurable I/O—allows universal selection and configuration of multiple types of input and output devices. This allows customers to easily install and reconfigure automation equipment. Manufacturers using software-configurable I/O benefit from typically reducing installation time by eight weeks, saving engineering expenses, and significantly reducing factory space requirements. Factory production processes can be adjusted more easily, and changes that once took hours can be completed in minutes.

• Predictive maintenance and condition-based monitoring help improve productivity and reliability across the plant. Operating parameters such as vibration patterns can reveal early signs of wear, so wear can be repaired before a machine fails or shuts down. This is a prime example of the importance of precise sensor measurements, smart data analytics, and high-bandwidth networks in Industry 4.0 systems. Successful implementation of predictive maintenance is about more than just the underlying technology—it requires deep domain expertise in automation and industrial machine operations to develop algorithms and software that turn machine health data into operational intelligence.

In systems used to monitor the health of machinery, sensors generate a stream of raw measurements of vibration, temperature, and other parameters. Signal processing techniques make this data stream suitable for analysis, for example by removing noise and distortion and linearizing the output.

This data is then transformed into information using software and analytics to correlate data from multiple sources, detect anomalous patterns, and identify and locate actual or potential failures.

• Technical expertise

• Domain or application expertise

But ADI is not a typical semiconductor company: we continue to push the boundaries of silicon technology in key markets and invest heavily in software, system expertise, and domain knowledge. We combine this knowledge with unmatched analog and digital technologies - sensing, measurement, interpretation, connection, power, and security - to help the industry overcome challenges at the system level and help customers find the best way to achieve successful business results.

• Opt for scalable connectivity technologies that use standards-based solutions rather than proprietary systems.
• Specify sensors that are robust and have a long operating life, and that provide accurate and precise measurements.

Every step toward a more digitally connected factory increases the threat of cyberattacks, so security is another key priority for managers as they evaluate Industry 4.0 initiatives.

Optimizing security requires thinking at the system level, not just the requirements of any specific device or endpoint. Security can be provided in a variety of ways throughout the system—at the end device, at the controller, at the gateway, or in the stack. Before focusing on how to do it at any given point in the network, system specifiers should focus on the where and how much.

This should take into account the threat level at each point, as well as the cost of countering the threat, in order to increase effective security measures by minimizing the trade-offs between power consumption, performance, and latency. A layered security model will achieve a superior overall security posture.

Manufacturers would be wise to adopt a system-level safety model that goes beyond the machine level, expand safety expertise, and systematically invest time and resources or choose a partner like ADI.