The Best Industry 4.0 Technologies For Manufacturers of Customizable Goods

1. The Best Industry 4.0 Technologies For Manufacturers of Customizable Goods ------------------------------------------------------ The internet has transformed everything: business, education, government, healthcare, media, entertainment, even the way human beings interact! The rate of innovation has been astounding. And while most people would assume that manufacturing has transformation, they'd be wrong. undergone a similarly profound In fact, GDP growth has been declining for the past 50 years. Manufacturing productivity has stagnated. We've moved our factories offshore, made them substantially bigger, and streamlined their operations, but walk onto your average production floor today, and you'll be surprised by how little has changed over the intervening five decades. Only 8% of manufacturing processes are automated. Throughout history, significant leaps in GDP growth have resulted from revolutionary advances in manufacturing. The First Industrial Revolution saw the arrival of steam and water power; the Second, the rise of mass production; the Third, in the 1970s, saw the emergence of electronics; and we're now witnessing the dawn of ​the Fourth Industrial Revolution​, better known as Industry 4.0, where interconnectivity, automation, machine learning, AI, and big data are forecast to take productivity to dizzying new heights. Below, we take a closer look at the best Industry 4.0 technologies - the ones that are revolutionizing manufacturing for the fourth time. We pay particular attention to manufacturers of customized goods, explaining how they can tap into Industry 4.0 technologies right now!

2. Although conceptualized as an interconnected whole - a cyber-physical network. Together these technologies create the "smart factory" - a flexible system connected to a global network of other systems and supply networks that self-optimizes, self-adapts, and runs autonomously in a virtuous information value loop. we explore each technology in isolation, they should be Industry 4.0 Technologies Examples Autonomous Robotics Robots have been involved in manufacturing for decades, but not like this. Under Industry 4.0, this new breed of autonomous robots will work with one another and with humans to carry out an array of non-repetitive tasks, allowing manufacturers to produce one-off customized products for the same unit cost as a massive run of thousands. Additive manufacturing Often called "3D printing", additive manufacturing is a CAD-controlled process that enables three-dimensional objects to be created by depositing and joining materials, usually in layers. With additive manufacturing, the differential cost between batches of one unit or a thousand is negligible, enabling the rapid creation of light, hardwearing, customized goods. Additive manufacturing technology has already transformed plastics' production, and now it's doing the same for metals. Horizontal and vertical integration Under Industry 4.0, companies, functions, supply chains, and even entire industries are integrated through universal data networks. Smart supply chains, intelligent logistics, and new taxation models (who should pay the tax when goods are printed across continents rather than shipped?) are

3. horizontally engineering, QA, product management, and IT are vertically integrated. integrated. Business functions such as sales, marketing, The cloud Such levels of horizontal and vertical integration call for rapid data sharing across companies, sites, and systems, which is all done in the cloud. 5G promises the next level of speed, efficiency, and performance with peak data transfer rates of 20 Gbps. Cybersecurity Cybersecurity takes on even greater importance when so much sensitive data lives in the cloud. New Industry 4.0 security solutions are being introduced to mitigate known threats and learn to identify new ones. Industrial augmented reality (AR) AR lets workers and buyers access digital information and overlay it onto the physical world. It supports various manufacturing tasks, from selecting parts in a warehouse to assembling products on the shop floor, letting workers receive information in real-time, productivity. enhancing decision making and Virtual reality (VR) VR allows manufacturers to simulate and optimize machines, products, and humans under an array of potential scenarios before real-world, physical changeover. Quality and productivity can be maximized without the risk of downtime or product recalls. IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) IIoT packaging, even people to collect critical production data. Manufacturers can uses a network of sensors embedded into machines, products,

4. identify bottlenecks, failures, and quality issues before they happen. They can optimize inventory management, improve safety, predict machine failures and degradation, reduce machine downtime, and increase overall efficiency. Big data and analytics Big data refers to the collection and quick, efficient analysis of data gathered from production equipment, customer-management databases, and numerous other sources. The data pool is so massive and growing so fast that it exceeds the capacity of standard tools for collection, storage, management, and analysis. Machine learning uses this data to determine patterns, predict future outcomes and trends, teaching itself, and getting exponentially more effective over time. systems, enterprise- and How technologies? can manufacturers of customizable goods tap into Industry 4.0 Industry 4.0 technologies are resulting in a growth in productivity and several large scale macroeconomic shifts: Factories are relocating back to home markets and becoming smaller and more agile; trade flows between China and the US are being replaced by cleaner, more efficient, regional manufacturing; new, intelligent machines are producing a wide range of products without the need for retooling; and small production runs, even batches of a single unit, are becoming economically viable. Manufacturers can now provide customization at scale, offering outstanding value to buyers who can tailor products to their exact specifications and buy them in small quantities. But this presents a fundamental challenge to manufacturers: how to configure the right products, at the right price, for each customer, when there are thousands of complex options to choose from?

5. Visual CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) is a highly accessible gateway solution that allows manufacturers to exploit the flexibility afforded by Industry 4.0 technologies while providing the best possible customer experience. Using an inbuilt ​visual product configurator​, sales reps and even end customers themselves can follow on-screen instructions to configure products visually. Product and pricing logic programmed into the backend ensures every product is optimized from a technical and profitability standpoint. With visual product configuration, users simply point, click, drag, and drop within a visual interface to add or remove parts, resize sections, and upgrade features. As they make changes, a visual representation of their product updates in real-time. Solutions like KBMax can integrate AR and VR technology into the product configuration immersive experience accessible to businesses of all sizes. KBMax CPQ lives in the cloud (SaaS) so it can be accessed from anywhere, through any device, and seamlessly integrate into any number of internal and external data networks. process, providing a fully Once product configuration has been finalized, CPQ uses big data and machine learning to calculate optimized generating a range of quotes and proposals. This frees sales reps from the burden of number crunching and formatting and leaves them more time to do what they do best - sell! KBMax takes automation one giant step further, generating engineering and production data too. CAD files, workflows, BOMs, and cut sheets are created without any engineering input and then transferred to relevant teams and machines, be it autonomous robots, 3D printers, or CNC. prices before automatically