Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/989774
28 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JUNE 2018 As digitalization and the use of IoT in the manufacturing environment continues to pick up speed, critical changes are enabled, which are needed to achieve the levels of performance and flexibil- ity expected with Industry 4.0. Existing practices must be questioned and re-evaluated in the digital factory context. In this series, we look at examples of the traditional barriers to flexi- bility and value creation and suggest new digital best prac- tices to see how these barriers can be avoided, or even eliminated. To understand more advanced opportunities provided by factory digitali- zation and IoT, we will consider both the manufacturing operation and the plight of the machine vendor, who has invested time and money, working hard to create an excellent automation technology that meets an industry need in a highly competitive environment. Even after the core technology of the machine has been developed and refined, there have traditionally been significant barri- ers to overcome related to the communica- tion of critical information. The machine itself in isolation is an example of Industry 3.0, an automated, self-contained process. The connection of the machine into the digital infrastruc- ture of the factory is the first key step towards Industry 4.0. The part played by the digital IoT revolu- tion is to remove these commu- nication barri- ers and bring a real value to the machine vendor, not only reducing need- less costs, but also enabling the creation of addi- tional added-value in the machines them- selves. The first such information exchange is the engineering data needed to create the detailed machine instructions. From Legacy Engineering Data Processing... For any automated machine to operate, it is necessary to have a sequence of digital instructions to follow. The creation of these involves a clear and detailed understanding Accelerating Tech—Insights from the Smarter Factory by Michael Ford, AEGIS SOFTWARE Advanced Digitalization Makes Best Practice Part 1: Digital Remastering