Design_World_-_Internet_of_Things_Handbook_April_2020

As data are increasingly aggregated across manufacturing lines, the reality of autonomous lines is

likely to be reached in the next fi ve years. Here’s a look at what a typical journey towards autonomous

manufacturing looks like and best practices for how manufacturers can begin to achieve this. 

Within the industrial world, leaders

are defi ning their journey to autonomous

manufacturing. Manufacturers are focusing on

digitization strategies that will help to drive

effi ciency across their plants.

INTERNET OF THINGS HANDBOOK

autonomous manufacturing 

The Journey towards

Dr. Michael Grant, CTO, DataProphet

When refl ecting on the concepts of Industry 4.0, we need to consider where

production systems have come from and the changes that have been made over

time to improve throughput and effi ciency.

Production improvement starts with robotic process automation (RPA), where

you take a repetitive process and apply some form of mechanization to improve

the throughput rate. The interesting thing here is that it doesn’t improve the

processes quality, but does make it less variable—simply because the process

When refl ecting on the concepts

of Industry 4.0, consider where

production systems came from

and the changes made to improve

throughput and e ciency. 

Production improvement starts

with robotic process automation

(RPA) that make processes less

variable because the process is

more repeatable.

16 DESIGN WORLD — EE NETWORK 4 • 2020 eeworldonline.com | designworldonline.com