Eliza Palmer
A smart factory is generally a highly connected and digital production provision that relies heavily on manufacturing in a very smart way. When you thought of the so-called smart factory of the near future and still it is infancy, the concept of this smart factory is basically considered as an important result of the 4th industrial revolution, or call it an Industry 4.0.
Generally, used by the manufacturing companies, the smart factory mostly functions by employing the latest technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, analytics, the internet of things and big data which can run largely on its own with an ability to self-correct.
Characteristics Of Smart Factory
Well, the defining characteristics of a smart factory are connectivity visibility and autonomy. The factories have generally relied on automation, but the smart factories go on to enhance this concept and take it a little further and are pretty much able to run with not much of human intervention. Despite, the use of all the modern technologies, the enterprise app development can learn and very well adapt in the near real-time or real-time, enabling the factories to get more flexible when compared to those of the past.
The Technology And The Processes Of The Smart Factory
The use of extensive IoT sensors and the devices connect the machines which enables visibility into the condition alongside the factory processes, making an industrial IOT meaning, internet of things. The ever-increasingly sophisticated applications and analytics based on machine learning and artificial intelligence handle much of the routine tasks, that help in freeing up the people in order to focus on exceptions of handling and then making you take higher-level decisions. The robots are very much expected to inhabit smart factories for all the routine working alongside the people.
The Benefits And The Challenges Of Smart Factory
Given that the most fundamental characteristic of all these smart factories is their connectedness where sensors are very critical in order to link the machines, devices, and systems so as to provide the data needed in order to make real-time decisions. In the same way, the smart home gadgets accomplish routine actions such as dimming the lights on a particular time or then triggering alerts when you miss something and the ideal factory runs on its own on a much bigger scale, the self-correcting were an appropriate and very alerting for the human intervention when needed. Additionally, the amount of data gives real-time insight to chain stakeholders, both to the business, inside the factory and to the partners.
This way, the agility can be increased exponentially and the issues can be addressed actively. Already, the IoT technologies are helping to monitor the industrial operations, providing the supply chain visibility and then predict the equipment downtime.
