Industry 4.0 and Logistics 4.0

Surely you have already heard of the term “Industry 4.0”, but what is it? In this article we explain what Industry 4.0 is called, the present and future technologies that are making it possible and the essential parallel evolution of Logistics, which is also experiencing its own revolution and which allows us to talk about Logistics 4.0.

When we talk about Industry 4.0, “4.0” refers to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

In the middle of the 18th century, the application of steam engines to production represented the First Industrial Revolution. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the popularization of electrical energy and its infrastructures for its application for both domestic and industrial purposes gave way to mass production and the division of labor, representing the Second Industrial Revolution.

In the early 1970s, advances in microelectronics, telecommunications, and information technology ushered in the Third Industrial Revolution. In recent decades we have witnessed the digitization of information, the popularization of the Internet, greater automation of processes, and globalization.

If the digitalization of information has been one of the keys in the industrial revolution of recent times, the most recent technological advances will allow digitalization to be extended to the physical. Products, merchandise, machine tools, factories, warehouses and vehicles will be interconnected with each other and will work autonomously, creating networks where the division between information and the physical will dissipate, with the gigantic potential that this represents, which will constitute the Fourth Revolution. Industrial.

The term “Industry 4.0” began to be heard in 2011 in Germany, during the Hannover Messe (Hannover Fair in English), one of the largest industrial fairs in the world. In 2012, the German Government created a working group on Industry 4.0 with the aim of analyzing and presenting recommendations for its implementation. Since then, and mainly in Europe, there has been talk of Industry 4.0.

Outside of Europe and especially in the US it is more common to talk about the Internet of Things. Industry 4.0 is a term that is based on the Internet of Things applied specifically to industry and very particularly to manufacturing systems, but, as we will see, the term encompasses more technologies and concepts.

Internet of Things, in English Internet of Things, abbreviated IoT, is a trend that consists of taking digitization to the physical, in which real objects form an information network. Objects are interconnected with each other through wired and wireless networks using the Internet protocol.

To get the most out of it, all the things that participate in the network can have sensors to obtain information about their environment and have actuators to interact with it, with the possibility of including some level of artificial intelligence or decision making. for a more autonomous operation, speaking then of cyber-physical systems (cyber-physical systems in English, abbreviated CPS).

The Internet of Things is already real and a great proliferation of connected “things” is expected in the coming years. One speaks of “things” due to the practically unlimited fields of application: implants for medical monitoring, cars with built-in sensors, smart buildings, power plants, self-driving vehicles, home automation, traffic control systems, etc.

The Internet of Things is possible thanks to advances in low consumption wireless networks, new types of sensors, micro-mechanical systems, identification systems (such as RFID and NFC), etc.

Industry 4.0 is the next phase of the digitization of the industrial sector, which will include not only information but also the physical and will especially transform production systems.

The Internet of Things is a fundamental pillar, where everything will be connected. But that all things can collect information from their environment and communicate it generates huge volumes of data. To manage this information and use it in a practical way, technological developments such as Big Data, Big Data Analytics, Business-Intelligence and predictive analytics are used.

But the digitization of production systems goes further. Cyber-physical systems (CPS), robotics and artificial intelligence will allow machine tools to be more modular, flexible and work autonomously. Industry 4.0 implies taking automation to levels much higher than the current ones. Automated systems will be able to learn and adapt to the manufacture of different products, they will be able to predict breakdowns or changes in production and automatically initiate maintenance or corrective operations.

All this will allow the concept of Smart Factory to materialize. Smart factories that will be more like manufacturing units, that will be interconnected and work collaboratively.

Additive manufacturing systems, more commonly known as 3D printing, are already being applied in the industry. The possibility of manufacturing objects in different materials, including metal, through 3D printing is revolutionizing industrial business models. One of the direct consequences is to dedicate the more traditional mass manufacturing to generic components and to use additive manufacturing for the personalization of products in the last phase of manufacturing.

This makes it possible to compete more efficiently in globalized markets, which require shorter product life cycles and have greater fluctuations in demand levels.

In conventional industry, automation, information and business processes are combined but there is still a clear separation between each of these parts. In Industry 4.0, information and the physical objects that produce and consume it will be indivisible and will form an integral part of process management. With the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the separation between materials and information will blur, because the latter will be an intrinsic part of the products.

With the Smart Factory concept, production systems will move away from centralized manufacturing plants and instead networks of interconnected manufacturing units will be created. This will cause raw materials and semi-finished products to be moved much more frequently.

In today’s globalized markets, products have shorter life cycles and variations in demand are more unpredictable. With additive manufacturing systems, new products can be launched on the market more quickly and safety stock levels can be reduced. Flexibility and interconnectivity will help to predict and react more efficiently to variations in demand, thus reducing the bullwhip effect. With production systems that allow efficient product customization, the differences between mass markets and long-tail-based business models will blur.

Industry 4.0 will add greater complexity to supply chains that will have to be able to evolve in equal measure. But the same technologies that allow us to talk about Industry 4.0 are also revolutionizing Logistics, being able to talk about Logistics 4.0.

The Internet of Things allows merchandise to have sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, geolocation, etc. Currently, the combination of systems such as active RFID with geolocation systems and wireless communication networks are already making it possible to monitor merchandise in real time and make decisions remotely based on the data received.

But in the future, as the technologies applied to traceability become cheaper, each pallet or each product could have its own connected device and be transported in smart containers that automatically adapt the temperature and humidity levels based on the current state of the merchandise, as well as automatically detect defects in the loads or propose more appropriate transport routes depending on each destination, type of load or expiration date.

Industry 4.0 is characterized by the digitization of manufacturing processes. But the logistics sector has its own revolution with initiatives such as the Physical Internet (Physical Internet in English, abbreviated PI) and that we must not confuse with the Internet of Things.

The Physical Internet is an international initiative to develop an open global logistics system. In the Internet of Information, various standards and protocols define how data is transported, dividing it into packets so that each one follows the most efficient path to its destination. The Physical Internet follows a similar approach, in which instead of data packets we will have standardized containers where the merchandise will travel, facilitating efficient and sustainable handling, storage, and transportation through all the participants in the logistics chain. These containers will benefit from information technologies to be constantly monitored in real time as well as to be transported following the most appropriate routes for each destination and type of merchandise.

Logistics will evolve towards increasingly automated systems. The transport of merchandise with self-manned vehicles will be a reality in the coming decades. Currently, Rolls-Royce is investigating a project for unmanned cargo ships, or “drones ships”, which could be technologically available in the coming years and which would allow fleets of hundreds of freighters to be controlled efficiently.

Self-manned vehicles for road transport will undoubtedly be a reality much sooner than we think. Currently, the Google Car project has a fleet of two-seater cars without drivers for the transport of passengers, which are already working as a test on real streets in the United States, thanks to artificial vision systems, geolocation and intelligence. artificial.

Drones are another of the bets of logistics companies for the near future. The possibility of transporting small loads by air efficiently and economically has already given rise to several projects to distribute merchandise directly from the warehouse to the final consumer.

Although the limitations of current drones are their autonomy and their limited payload capacity, several universities around the world are investigating swarm robotics applied to drones. In this way, multiple drones could fly working cooperatively to carry larger payloads, to provide redundancy, and to perform complex maneuvers that a single drone could not.

But for logistics to be able to adopt all these advances efficiently, an evolution in intralogistics is also necessary, optimizing handling operations within warehouses.

Automated storage systems such as those of ATOX Technological Solutions provide modular systems that can integrate any sensor technology and communicate with warehouse information technology systems, allowing the digitalization of internal merchandise transport and order preparation, thus evolving towards logistics clever or Smart Logistics.

ATOX Storage Systems has been manufacturing high quality metal shelving for more than 50 years. For more than half a century, ATOX has witnessed the evolution of the logistics sector and its effect on warehouses.

Aware of the challenges of modern supply chains, ATOX is firmly committed to R+D+i, which has given rise to the intelligent storage systems of ATOX Technological Solutions.

All ATOX automated systems are modular, energy efficient, and can easily communicate with any IT system the warehouse is using.

ATOX intelligent roller conveyors bring new technologies to the physical plane, providing a solution to the internal transport of merchandise within warehouses. They can incorporate any type of sensors and traceability technologies and have diverters that act as sorters for the automatic classification of merchandise.

Modern logistics will increasingly automate the repetitive manual tasks of warehouse operators. Systems such as ATOX’s SHERPA 800 radio shuttle allow speeding up the handling of palletized merchandise, increasing safety and turning drive-in racking without aisles into high-density storage systems.

ATOX automatic dispensing is capable of preparing orders fully automatically at very high speed, with a robust and reliable design that allows it to withstand high workloads.

Light guidance for pick-to-light and put-to-light operations increases ergonomics and reduces the level of inventory errors by warehouse operators during order picking. Thanks to its versatility, it can also assist in merchandise replenishment and reverse logistics tasks.

As a leading quality storage systems manufacturer, ATOX has extensive experience optimizing warehouses in a wide variety of business sectors at an international level. This experience allows him to design and develop industrial racking systems that provide solutions to the current and future needs of warehouses.