Issue link: https://te.mouser.com/i/1472772
7 CONNECTED LIFE Connected Factory: Accelerating Productivity, Reducing Inefficiency As connectivity comes to factories, both consumers and manufacturers stand to gain. Consumers will benefit from innovative products that come to market faster. And manufacturers will benefit from increased efficiency and greater control over production quality, maintenance, and the supply chain. The Factory 4.0 will operate much differently from its predecessors in order to react quickly to changes in markets. Increasingly, industrial demand is changing from mass production to customized manufacturing – for example, custom-printed footwear that's molded according to the precise cushioning needs of an athlete's foot, from manufacturers such as Adidas. To accommodate this change, the structure of the factory has to change as well: Instead of a production line, factories will rely on individual production steps, all managed by systems that talk to each other. One machine can alert another with a message such as "I need maintenance in two weeks" — and the machine on the receiving end of the message can initiate a maintenance request, all without human intervention. Or, one machine can send a message about ambient temperature to the climate-control system: "Since it's hot in the factory today, please regulate temperature so that we don't overheat." It's a much less hierarchical process than what was common in traditional factories of the past, where machines would communicate instructions to the level below them, and so on. In Factory 4.0, thanks to intelligent data-sharing, machines can operate more independently. In effect, these subsystems can make their own decisions and improve factory efficiency. How the Internet of Things Accelerates the Connected Factory The trend toward the Internet of Things, or IoT — in which machines and processes are connected by electronics, software, and sensors — is making Factory 4.0 a reality. Because machines are connected to each other, they build intelligence into manufacturing floors and production lines where it didn't exist before. These connected systems create greater value and service by capturing and exchanging data with other connected devices — building more and better products, faster. When systems are connected, valuable data within a manufacturing line can boost uptime and efficiency, or be used to customize goods. IoT therefore has the potential to create what's often called the fourth industrial revolution.