THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING IS HERE: THE EMERGENCE OF INDUSTRY 4.0

Prof. Shreyanshu Parhi

Operations Management

The 21^st century marks the onset of 4^th Industrial revolution where the manufacturing activity is no longer bounded to only value-adding processes but is considered as an integrated approach initiating from machines/equipment in production systems to the entire business level operating activities. Modern industries focus on engineering as well as business aspects of the product. The increased acceptability of product in the market demands the adoption of more customer-centric real-time approach in manufacturing processes and design. This can be accomplished through the proper monitoring and management of data for manufacturing processes. Data forms an integral part of the present manufacturing requirement. The future of manufacturing depends on data analytics and decision-making. This dependence on data gives rise to the concept of smart manufacturing or Industry 4.0. The fourth Industrial revolution often referred to ‘Industry 4.0’ marks the digitalization in manufacturing due to the data-driven business models and decision-making process. The gradual enhancement in technology clearly indicated that there is a paradigm shift from the conventional mechanized manufacturing to highly integrated and connected smart manufacturing systems. The industry 4.0 focus on the end-to-end digitalization and integration of the manufacturing resource present in the shop floor to give rise to a fully integrated manufacturing systems driven by data. All the organization need to focus on Industry 4.0 to sustain in the market. Hence, Industry 4.0 is an evident technology rather than a hype. The German Trade and Invest (GTAI) states Industry 4.0 as that the manufacturing system where the manufacturing resources will not simply process the parts based on the pre-defined design specifications, but the customer-centric products processed will communicate with the manufacturing resources to instruct the course of action that needs to be taken.

The deployment of Industry 4.0 gives rise to several modifications in the manufacturing decisions. The pattern of manufacturing decisions also has a significant effect on the choice of Industry 4.0 enablers depending on the requirement. For Instance, the organization looking for improving sourcing decisions through digitalization need to look for choices of enablers like IoT, cloud manufacturing to facilitate inbound logistics integration. The inbound logistics integration will enable efficient coordination and communication of the supplier facilities with the manufacturers. The manufacturing decisions along with the industry 4.0 enablers (i.e., technologies) forms the inclusive part of the businesses and referred to as the smart manufacturing systems. The alterations made in the smart manufacturing systems will improve the performance frontier of the firm. The performance frontier is referred as the maximum performance that a business can achieve under given choices of manufacturing decisions. The advances made in the performance frontier will drive the manufacturing outputs. Therefore, it can be inferred that the deployment of Industry 4.0 enablers can have significant impact on the manufacturing outputs through the developments made in the manufacturing decisions. The required manufacturing outputs is the final offering to the customer which is further adjusted or modified as per the feedback given. The entire concept is referred as the process flow for Industry 4.0 systems (shown in Figure 1). Consequently, the Industry 4.0 enablers can have an influence in the manufacturing decisions and manufacturing outputs which in turn drives the manufacturing strategy.

Figure 1 Industry 4.0 Process Flow

The adoption of various enablers for Industry 4.0 makes substantial changes in the manufacturing systems, decisions, as well as the manufacturing processes. Thus, the future of manufacturing has arrived in the from of Industry 4.0.