E-commerce is out?

Online shopping experts often have such experience: looking at a colorful options on the web page but can not find the one you want to find. In the "Industry 4.0" era, there will be no such annoyance. The concept of "factory" is no longer just workers + assembly line + mass production. The shopping experience will be that the factory produces what the customer wants and delivers it quickly.

Drived by "Industry 4.0", the intelligent factory of the future can realize large-scale personalized customized production with highly flexible production content. Consumers can even bypass e-commerce platforms and directly contact manufacturers to create orders based on personalized needs. In this way, the value of the existence of e-commerce is bound to be greatly reduced.

But a factory is a factory, and in addition to personalized services, it also needs to maintain output and carry out mass production. Industry 4.0 is designed to solve this complex problem.

Future factories are likely to make extensive use of CPS, or "information physical systems", which include an intelligent output called eGrain, or "e-grain". The milley-sized device comes complete with a processor, sensors, antennas, batteries and more. Workpieces embedded in the eGrains will be able to contain all the information needed in the production process, intelligently process it, and then transfer it to other systems. In other words, machines will be able to communicate with each other to optimize the entire production process.

For example, if an artifact needs to be processed in the next step, it will use its IP to "post" to the entire CPS system: Who can process it next? Need it right away! If one machine replies, "I can do it, but it will take half an hour," the piece is automatically contacted by another machine. This mode of making machines, tools and artifacts realize self-decision in the information physics system to deal with various complex situations in the production process is called "M2M", namely machine to machine.

So, when machines can interact with "shout", does the worker still exist? Don't worry, in the factory of the future, workers will still be at the center. Defects are unavoidable in any manufacturing process, and it is the responsibility of highly qualified workers to eliminate detected defects. In fact, new technologies and tools will provide workers with unimaginable scope to become more of a factory commander and coordinator.

The future of life is more "cloud"

Today, concepts like "cloud computing" and "cloud logistics" are on the rise, and in the era of "Industry 4.0", "cloud" will be everywhere.

For example, when going to the toilet, the gate at the coin slot at the entrance of the public toilet will be equipped with a counter and connected to the Internet. The hand sanitizer container on the washbasin will also be equipped with a sensor chip to record the amount of leftover paper. The sensor for wiping toilet paper will show how much paper is left. All the information will be connected to the Internet and uploaded to the cloud, where it will be displayed in real time on the hand-held devices of the purchasing staff and will be able to communicate with the data of the grocery store. Such, whole toilet will maintain at any time go up the sanitary standard of beautiful, also let the job of purchase person more targeted.

Future home life will also be intelligent. Homeowners' mobile phones are connected to the cloud, giving them direct control over their appliances and furniture. According to the principle of "distributed system", the various parts of the "information physics system" can also communicate and make autonomous decisions.

For example, temperature sensors automatically direct air conditioning and heating systems, and in combination with motion-sensing devices to determine whether a room is occupied, decide to switch appliances on and off to save energy. Summer or winter, the sensor automatically calculates the time based on the owner's phone's distance and speed from home, to determine when to turn on the air conditioner and start cooking and grinding coffee in advance.

Therefore, in the era of "Industry 4.0", everything is connected, the virtual world is merged with the physical world, and the "cloud" is everywhere, which greatly optimizes the decision-making process of information collection and resource utilization. Of course, these services to help you live smarter are not free. In the future, it will be more about selling services than products.

Take time off.

The era of "Industry 4.0" will not only give birth to intelligent production, but also bring new management concepts. Industry 4.0 is a time of greater work autonomy, greater efficiency and more flexible holidays.

The Stuttgart airport in southern Germany, for example, is open all day and all year round, but the number of passengers varies greatly in summer and winter, and utilization varies throughout the day. Therefore, the airport has designed a more flexible employment system based on the concept of "Industry 4.0". Employees can take on more than one job during the winter off-season and receive bonuses based on their performance, as well as value benefits created by the flexible employment system.

In its first year, Stuttgart's airport saw a surge in productivity. The airport used to pay nearly 10 million euros a year in compensation for overtime, but productivity has stayed high and overtime pay has been cut.

Similar to decentralized systems, the management philosophy of Industry 4.0 is less about centralized management and more about decentralized, autonomous decision-making. For example, Air Berlin, Germany's second largest airline, had a plane flying from Frankfurt to Berlin in the afternoon and needed on-site maintenance that night. Under the general centralized approach, it is up to headquarters to confirm the availability of appropriate maintenance tools, spare parts and skilled workers in Berlin. However, for Air Berlin, which operates more than 150 aircraft and flies more than 300 missions a day, it is a major maintenance challenge when flights are changed.

The decentralized management theory of "Industry 4.0" can help airlines to make more efficient arrangements and change the decision-making body from headquarters to each aircraft. The aircraft can contact the local airport and ask if the tools and workers are available. If they are not, the aircraft immediately contacts other airlines and asks them to drop off the parts they need for the day's maintenance.

In this way, the aircraft form an information-physics system that greatly improves their ability to respond flexibly to complex situations. It has been calculated that Air Berlin could save more than 60 million euros by flying five fewer planes a year.

Industry 4.0 is much more complicated than that, of course, but in the end, the goal is "smart" in bold letters.