Industry 4.0 explained

“Industry 4.0” refers to the concept of factories in which machines are augmented with wireless connectivity and sensors, connected to a system that can visualize the entire production line and make decisions on its own.  It also means that you are probably working with McKinsey or Accenture – but not necessarily.  Most organizations lack experience managing major IT projects and multi-vendor programs.

How to visualize this concept is autonomous equipment and vehicles: There are ship yards that are leveraging autonomous cranes and trucks to streamline operations as they accept shipping containers from the ships.  There is drone delivery in production and soon to be autonomous trucking and Uber/Lyft fleets.

The major enabler is the Internet of Things and the cloud.  A key component of Industry 4.0 is the Internet of Things that is characterized by connected devices. Not only does this help internal operations, but through the use of the cloud environment where data is stored, equipment and operations can be optimized by leveraging the insights of others using the same equipment or to allow smaller enterprises access to technology they wouldn’t be able to on their own.