FEATURE INDUSTRY 4.0


How important is Industry 4.0 for the electronics industry?


Thomas Brand from Analog Devices, Inc. looks across the manufacturing landscape and explores the impact of digitisation, as the promise of Industry 4.0 begins to show its true potential


ndustry 4.0 is a much-discussed and very differently interpreted term. Roughly it can be classified into three fields: new technologies, new product offerings, and new business models. All three fields together cover the whole value chain of the production and its products - starting at the sensor node, via the cloud, up to downstream services (Figure 1).


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If you go deeper into the system level and focus on the vertical segments, you can offer customers an even more complete system. The node, in terms of a complete hardware platform, can be offered together with corresponding software packages. This may also include associated algorithms to analyse data already in the node and finally only pass the results as less data intensive information to the network (cloud).


NEW REQUIREMENTS FOR IIOT In consideration of the industrial value chain, market requirements will change in the future. Among other reasons, this is why semiconductor manufacturers have to adapt their own enterprise, as well as their products, to the reality of the smart factory. The technological trend is moving toward intelligent and extremely efficient products and, if possible, with integrated safety and security functions as well as energy harvesting abilities. In order to be able to offer customer security as part of the complete system solutions, semiconductor manufacturers should therefore also invest in technologies such as cyber security solutions (CSS) and encryption. Systems like those shown in Figure 2 have the consequence that fewer standard products are available at chip level, because in the future they can be integrated at the board level. The integration of standard products already takes place directly on the silicon or in the housing as a system-in-package (SiP). This means manufacturers will have to have in-depth knowledge at the chip level, or at least at the board level, together with a corresponding ecosystem.


32 MAY 2018 | ELECTRONICS


To enable this transition to the connected enterprise, more sensors must be introduced and connected at the factory floor. This is where ADI adds value to customers. Here are a few examples of where ADI is helping customers solve real problems: ► Deterministic Ethernet – allows customers to meet Real Time and Time- Critical Performance on the factory floor using multiple protocols and allowing a path to TSN


► Condition-based Monitoring - By maximising machine uptime and efficiency, the use of CbM in automation is already delivering on some of the productivity gains promised by Industry 4.0


► Universal Analogue IO – providing solutions that will bring higher integration, robustness, flexibility and efficiency resulting in significant time and cost savings


► Security - Functional safety is ubiquitous in automation systems with strict standardisation and certifications requirements


In the industrial automation sector, a clear shift toward Ethernet or, rather, Deterministic Ethernet, can be seen. It is not only the appropriate software, but also the tools and an adequate ecosystem surrounding the software that will add value to the customer. Because of this, new services and algorithms for analysing the generated data will also be required.


Figure 1: Today’s signal chain


One of the major obstacles is the perceived minimal benefit of a smart factory and its associated costs. For example, calculating the return on investment (ROI) currently remains quite difficult due to a lack of monetary evaluation criteria. With the transformation of the production sector, matters such as data and IT security have an increasingly important role. These topics are not just important requirements for the successful introduction of Industry 4.0 - they have to be implemented into digital systems as critical acceptance and success factors. Furthermore, it will be important for


companies to set their fundamental strategic course at an early stage within the implementation of Industry 4.0 to gather experience with the corresponding technologies. However, this process requires patience because many of the relevant technologies are not likely to exploit their full potential for five to 10 years or even longer. Moreover, because of the lack of a clear definition, there is no exact date by which Industry 4.0 will be completely implemented. Instead of talking about an industrial revolution, it may be more meaningful to use the term industrial evolution. As part of the much larger Internet of


Figure 2:


MEMS-based smart- sensor-solution


Things—also known as the Internet of Everything - Industry 4.0 holds enormous potential. In the next few decades, the market value is expected to be in the range of trillions. Anything that increases productivity with the help of Industry 4.0 will be of great interest for companies of all sizes. To fully exploit the full potential of the IoT market requires more than just hardware. It requires an ecosystem of hardware, software, and services. In this new environment, small, agile companies are encouraged to work with larger companies and develop collaborations.


Analog Devices www.analog.com 01628 477 066


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