Factories of the future represents the next big revolution in manufacturing – a transition from industrial age to digital age – that will involve complete automation and integration of systems across factory floor, and beyond. The ultimate goal of the future factory will be to seamlessly, safely and securely integrate systems across domains, hierarchies, geographic boundaries, value chains and even life cycle phases. The role of humans will change from being machine operators to providing intelligent support and decision making to enable the businesses to fulfil changing manufacturing demands. Internet technology, among others, will play a big role in making the transition to this digital age happen.
The objective of the full day seminar was to showcase the state of the art technologies in the field of factories of the future; looking at the latest research and themes in control and automation that are aimed at making future manufacturing businesses agile, flexible, and adaptable to respond to ever-changing market demands. The fantastic line up of speakers covered a wide range of topics including:
• Role of manufacturing in the economies of the future
• Overview of emergent research programmes including Industry 4.0
• Review of open challenges and opportunities together with an overview of ongoing research on themes such as intelligent systems, cyber-security, manufacturing execution systems, cloud computing and big data analytics.
• Future research requirements and topics
Our speakers came from a variety of backgrounds, Graeme Philp, Gambica, Alan Norbury, Siemens, Professor Duncan McFarlane, Cambridge University, Jeremy Hadall, MTC, Oliver Glub, Siemens, Steven Carter, Rolls Royce and Steven Matthews, Cisco Systems, all leading experts in their fields.
During the presentations we learnt that uptake of robotics in the UK is actually poor and there are a number of reasons for this, including skills shortage and understanding the benefits that can be gained. For me, this was quite surprising since it is acknowledged for example that robotics is proven to increase manufacturing productivity.
Look out too for the new emerging Industry Standards in 2016: DIN SPEC 91345_RAMI4 - Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0
Cyber security is, of course, a big issue and the importance of having a plan to reduce the threat was stressed: doing nothing is not an option. Cyber attackers are sophisticated and their primary goal is financial gain. The biggest cyber threat facing internet connected enterprises is criminals and ransomware.
The day culminated in a lively panel discussion with some very interesting questions from an engaged audience.
A techbite has been produced following the event and is available for download.