INNOVATION
INDUSTRY 1.0
INDUSTRY 2.0
INDUSTRY 3.0
INDUSTRY 4.0
Mechanisation, Water Power, Steam Power
Mass Production, Assembly Line, Electricity
Computer and Automation
Cyber Physical Systems
S O, W H AT I S I N D U S T RY 4 . 0 ?
Industry 4.0 is the latest iteration of an industrial revolution. The current use of the term is itself driven by digitalisation. Back at the end of the 18th century, Industry 1.0 as it’s now referred to under this banner, was water, steam and power. We then went into mass production and the electrical age where that electrical energy really transformed what you could do from an industrial perspective. In the early ‘70s that transferred into electronics, IT, PLC’s, and IPC’s. All sorts of different connective technologies and mechanical technologies that took the electrical age to that next level. Today, Industry 4.0 is really looking at the cyber physical systems (CPS - integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes. Embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa.) There is one thing that does make 4.0 stand out from the others, and that’s the fact that this is the first Industrial Revolution that you can’t necessarily see. It’s almost in the air around us, but it is hugely impactful. It is the combination of the cyber physical systems together with digitalisation that really starts to put all those components together. When we put these components together we can start to consider it as more than the sum of its parts. If we have a product - at solution level, device level, or any other level that has inbuilt intelligence and capability that is then enabled for communication and can network, then can we effectively claim this to sit under the Industry 4.0 banner? There’s now quite a lot of evidence to suggest that this idea is gaining some traction.
4 6 | U K S PA B R E A K T H R O U G H | S P R I N G 2 0 18
High-tech companies are investing in a lot of research activities aligned to industry 4.0. Intelligent components at the unit task level and sensors that are directly connected to the web. Human machine cooperation and virtual commissioning; where you don’t have to necessarily be there to interact and set different settings in machines, are all making progress.
THE CYBER-PHYSICAL MODEL
Festo’s cyber-physical Factory (CP Factory), for example, is a learning tool that enables us to look at the key features of industry 4.0 within a factory model, see how they manifest themselves, work with them, learn from them, see how we can get the best out of the new technologies that exist. From a laboratory perspective, this factory model is not dissimilar in structure to a working lab with silo platforms and components that are all creating activity for parts of the workflow. Components within industry 4.0 can add value to a lab that doesn’t physically change its form but adds a digital layer that sits above what’s already physically there; its digital twin. You can connect all the equipment virtually and could deliver information to it via a cyber-physical system. Such a solution would deliver whole system data that can be automatically collected and analyzed, and holistic simulations to boost accuracy, throughput and overall efficiency. You could look at what a lab is doing in real time, from wherever you are in the world at any point in time, even though none of the equipment inside the laboratories are connected to each other.
The laboratory of the future will combine modularity, adaptivity, miniaturisation and a wealth of information technology
IND U S T RY 4 .0 IS T HE F IR S T IND U S T R I A L RE VOLUTION T H AT Y O U C A N ’ T NE C E S S A R ILY S E E This concept really challenges us to consider what is connected. In the past if you were to think about a connected lab or connected workflow, we would think about it in a physical form. There would be workstations that would be connected by transport systems or conveyors, but now with the components of industry 4.0, the same connectivity can be had with siloed physical equipment. That’s a big shift in the ability to manage a lab and in what a lab can provide the user and the company that is funding it.
OVERCOMING BARRIERS
I think the laboratory industry recognizes the fact that automation is unlikely to diminish the workforce or take jobs away from people. Robots are only going to reduce the mundane activities of lab technicians. Typically, very highly-qualified and skilled people that have been employed for their know-