Industry 4.0 applications have been one of the central themes at K 2016. Many companies showed practical production solutions. An important step towards the intelligent factory of the future has therefore been taken. Transparency and the possibility to be able to produce more flexibly already bring economic benefits today. These should become even greater in future, if industry 4.0 is developed further. The participants in VDMA’s final “Talk in the pavilion” at K 2016 agreed that this would be so.
“We show small achievable steps at the fair, which customers need today”, said Sandra Füllsack, Managing Director of Motan Holding. Large changes are to be expected in companies in future through digitalisation and networking. The classic machine operator, for example, will not exist. Instead of that, workers will have more monitoring functions.
Prof. Christian Hopmann, head of the IKV plastics processing institute at the RWTH University of North Rhine Westphalia, foresees strengthening of Germany as an industrial location. “Previously, always the same parts have been formed in always the same quality and in always the same quantities. The trend is going however towards greater variability. Industry 4.0 enables the required flexibility for this. It is then conceivable that industries that have been moved abroad can be brought back to Germany to become competitive there”, Hopmann said. Industry 4.0 clearly has potential for disruptive changes.
Entirely new business models will be possible in future through Industry 4.0 and its further development, because production will undergo a radical change, said Philipp Kremer, Manager Market Segment Plastics at robot producer Kuka. It is quite conceivable that intelligent parts will communicate with each other in future, that robots will become more mobile and use their own initiative to tackle tasks. “One can even imagine a dark hall in which robots move independently and work, like in a ballet”, Kremer said.
This form of mobile robotics has already been applied today in some parts of production processes, said Prof. Martin Bastian, head of the SKZ Süddeutsches Kunststoffzentrum. His institute is presently planning a model of a smart factory, in which future developments should be though out in advance.
“The aim must be the self-learning factory”, said Prof. Bastian.
Development in digitalisation and networking of production will not stand said also Dr Eric Maiser, head of the VDMA competence centre “Future Business” in an earlier discussion held earlier in the day in the VDMA Pavilion. “Networked communication is the prerequisite for machines to be able to draw intelligent conclusions in the next step. It is a matter of artificial intelligence”, Dr Maiser said. And he showed an example: in the Chinese board game „Go“ it is not a question of logical movements, but also a lot about intuition, a capability that humans have previously had as an advantage over machines. Dr Maiser pointed out that the present world champion in the “Go” game gas already been beaten three times by an intelligent computer.
Artificial intelligence, which has origins stretching back into the 1970’s, also sets off fear among humans however, and the concern about becoming superfluous. But numerous new business possibilities contrast with these concerns.