Industry 4.0 has received a lot of media attention in recent years, but the concept remains abstract for many entrepreneurs. Beyond the buzz, Industry 4.0 has the potential to significantly boost your productivity, reduce costs and improve the quality of your products.
“The core application of Industry 4.0 is to monitor and control your machinery and equipment in real time by putting sensors at every step of the production process,” says Pierre Cléroux, Vice President, Research and Chief Economist at BDC.
Essentially, the technology allows you to check on your production at every step of the process, therefore improving quality. It also helps reduce and even eliminate downtime, because the data from your equipment tells you when your machine needs maintenance or when it’s about to break down.
Is Industry 4.0 the same as advanced robotics?
In factories, robotics and digitalization work together very well, but they are not the same thing.
Robots are very good at doing repetitive precision work. Industry 4.0 technologies collect data about processes and can, for example, connect robots together or with other parts of the production process.
“We often hear in the media that we’ll all be replaced by robots in five years,” says Cléroux. “That’s not going to happen. But the technology is advancing step by step. Canadian businesses still have time to adjust, but they shouldn’t wait too long if they don’t want to be left out.”
Why is it called Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is the latest evolution of manufacturing. Over the past 250 years, several industrial revolutions transformed how manufacturers produce goods.
Like the mechanization, electrification, automation and globalization revolutions that preceded it, this “Fourth Industrial Revolution” promises to have a remarkable impact on how we make and sell goods.