Industry 4.0 is the digital transformation of industrial markets (industrial transformation)with smart manufacturing currently on the forefront. Industry 4.0 represents the so-called fourth industrial revolution in discrete and process manufacturing, logistics and supply chain (Logistics 4.0), the chemical industry, energy (Energy 4.0), transportation, utilities, oil and gas, mining and metals and other segments, including resources industries, healthcare, pharma and even smart cities.
Industry 4.0 is the evolution to cyber-physical systems, representing the fourth industrial revolution on the road to an end-to-end value chain with Industrial IoT and decentralized intelligence in manufacturing, production, logistics and the industry.
Originally Industry 4.0 was conceived in the context of manufacturing, yet this has changed. So, while all these industries fall under the scope of Industry 4.0 and are tackled in the academic, governmental and industrial collaborations which led to ‘Industrie 4.0’ but also to the evolutions after the term was coined you might still often read that Industry 4.0 is only about manufacturing, smart factories and activities, technologies and processes in the broader context of the factory, production and their most closely related areas. There is also a tendency to limit Industry 4.0 to (groups of)technologies such as IoT (the Internet of Things).
To understand Industry 4.0 it is essential to see the full value chain which includes suppliers and the origins of the materials and components needed for various forms of manufacturing, the end-to-end digital supply chain and the final destination of all manufacturing, regardless of the number of intermediary steps and players: the end customer (in his/her capacity as an entrepreneur, consumer, building occupant, retail store owner, worker, citizen, patient and so forth).
Enabling more direct models of personalized production, servicing, as well as customer/consumer interaction (including gaining real-time data from actual product usage)and cutting the inefficiencies, irrelevance and costs of intermediaries in a digital supply chain model, where possible, are some goals of Industry 4.0 in this customer-centric sense of increasingly demanding customers who value speed, (cost) efficiencies and value-added innovative services.
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