Industry 4.0 – The Emergence of Connected Factories & Enterprises
As automation, big data, block-chain & artificial intelligence continues to redefine our world, surely the manufacturing space cannot be far too behind. Over the last half-a-decade the emergence of the aforementioned technologies has vastly improved our lives, homes and everything around us. Within a very short span of time our world has moved ahead several computational generations and today we stand at the cusp of a truly transformational paradigm.
In this backdrop, the manufacturing space in itself has evolved and today we talk about the emergence of the Industry 4.0 standards wherein factories & enterprises have become smarter, more connected and definitely more productive. What is driving this transformational shift is – automation, improved human-machine interface, cloud, big data, 3D printing, remote sensing intelligent bots and so on.
Factories are no longer just avenues of mass producing commodities, driven by mechanical labour – they have evolved to become smart ecosystems that no longer work in isolation but are part of a global manufacturing revolution. Working dynamically, consistent with global consumption trends, a connected factory today can quickly ramp up production or scale it down with the same level of agility. Next-generation production technologies have made production more efficient and operations more intelligent.