The Path to Manufacturing 4.0: An Unconventional Approach

Updating proprietary legacy systems can be expensive, complicated, and lead to unwanted downtime that can slow production on the plant floor.

How do companies accomplish such a critical change without draining budgets and upending workflow? Surprisingly, the answer doesn't always involve completely rebuilding systems from scratch. Instead, removing antiquated equipment and streamlining connectivity without creating new security risks could successfully start organizations on their path to reaping the benefits of Manufacturing 4.0.

Manufacturing 4.0 - Taking automation to a new level

Automation and scalability are the driving forces moving manufacturing forward. These concepts have served as pivotal change agents since the very first Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. With each evolution, manufacturing has benefited from the advances in automation.

However, it’s often been difficult to foresee what lies ahead for the plant floor and how to plan for those innovations while investing in the current technology of the day. Often, these environments foster an ecosystem of proprietary equipment and systems that are challenging to upgrade.

Automation and scalability are the driving forces moving manufacturing forward. These concepts have served as pivotal change agents since the very first Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. With each evolution, manufacturing has benefited from the advances in automation.

However, it’s often been difficult to foresee what lies ahead for the plant floor and how to plan for those innovations while investing in the current technology of the day. Often, these environments foster an ecosystem of proprietary equipment and systems that are challenging to upgrade.

The third Industrial Revolution, which dominated the second half of the 20th century, began to enable automation in production thanks to the invention of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and robots.

These two game-changing solutions transformed the plant floor. The PLC enabled technicians to quickly adjust and expand manufacturing processes. They did a whole lot more, too, and are still critical components of any production facility. Robots helped perform tasks that were dangerous or repetitive, and contributed vastly to protecting workers and minimizing manufacturing errors. Robotics played a pivotal role in ushering in automation.

As technology evolved, so did the plant floor. This change didn’t happen all at once. Instead, the move to an automated factory occurred at different intervals as companies added new machines and systems, often in pieces, and installed upgrades when required. While manufacturers did reap the rewards of automation, it came at a price that is just being realized today.

Many of the systems driving, and certainly machines installed, are proprietary which makes upgrading or changing systems expensive, time consuming and often infeasible. Manufacturing 4.0 promises to provide actionable visibility to goods coming down the line. Fulfilling that promise isn’t easy to accomplish when a plant floor is made up of machines and parts from a variety of vintages and installed over the course of decades. Manufacturing 4.0 compliance means you have actionable visibility into your enterprise as well as your vendor’s enterprise.