Industry 4.0: an Approach to the Automotive Sector

We find ourselves with a sector, the industrial sector, in the midst of a “revolution,” even to the point of speaking of a fourth industrial revolution. For some time now, new terms have been frequently heard… “Factory of the Future,” Industry 4.0,” or “Smart Factory.” It is more than just a passing new jargon; it represents a new productive scenario through innovative solutions in different areas of the value chain, which translates into greater efficiency.

The “Factory of the Future” should not only focus on applying technology that reinforces product quality through the improvement of machining and robotic processes. It should also focus on optimizing other processes, such as production, logistics, commercial, and management processes, through the development of software and analysis systems that convert all the data provided by “Factory 4.0” into useful information, in order to anticipate decisions among the different links in the chain, and that revert to the quality, price, service of the product, and ultimately to competitiveness.

Beyond everything related to social networks, mobile applications, and the possibilities of big data as a universal data repository for decision support and continuous improvement of products and services, changes in the industrial field have also evolved rapidly:

• The increase of robotic systems in all scales of complexity and costs.
• The access to non-algorithmic computer applications of artificial intelligence and neural networks.
• The integral management and optimization of the factory through sensorization and m2m interaction.
• The optimization and control of logistics processes.

And this whole process, how has it affected the automotive sector?

In these recent years of decline in the Spanish economy, one of the few positive news items we have had has been the achievement of strong investments in a key sector of Spanish industry such as the Automotive sector. Practically all manufacturer brands have consolidated and increased their presence in our country. The reason for this perhaps should be sought in high levels of productivity, low costs, and high rates of quality. However, these same indicators also point out that other automobile manufacturing countries are below in costs, and the differential in productivity and quality is closing more and more. This industrial revolution may need ICT to become the main catalyst for change.

What has been achieved?

Today, achievements have already been made in manufacturing that seemed unthinkable a couple of decades ago:

• Flexibility of processes to adapt them to customer demand.
• Implementation of the “Lean Manufacturing” culture.
• Creation of safer environments to work in, environmentally better, and energetically more efficient.
• High levels of quality through standardization and the reduction in the variability of production processes.
• Improvement in the human potential of organizations.

What are we aiming to achieve?

Industry 4.0 must go further:

• It must be based on 6-Sigma processes with practically no variability, where achieving 0 defects is a reality.
• It has to be environmentally sustainable, where 100% of the waste generated in the processes is reused, with high levels of energy efficiency based on the recovery of the energy used in the production process.
• Speed in decision-making, based on the information available in real time and based on intelligent processes, which are capable of predicting failures, diagnosing breakdowns.
• In the Factory of the Future, the traceability of the components throughout the value chain will be decisive to have the individual history of each unit produced.
• To continue increasing the levels of reliability of the machines, new multi-sensorization systems of the equipment will be necessary, which allow the collection of data, storage, processing in real time, self-diagnosis, alarm systems based on predictive models, learning systems, and an automatic decision-making based on algorithms developed according to the most advanced data mining techniques.
  Perhaps in the future we will hear about the organic machine, with the capacity not only to self-diagnose, but also to self-repair.

What can Logitek contribute?

LOGITEK is prepared to accompany companies in the automotive sector that want to make the leap to Industry 4.0 with technological solutions that facilitate the integration of systems in the plant as well as real-time logistical coordination.

In addition, it offers advanced IT solutions that increase availability, security, and reduce the maintenance costs of the IT infrastructure in the plant, such as: Disaster recovery, Data integrity, different levels of availability.