There is a big hype on anything related to computers in manufacturing. I have written quite a few cautionary articles on the Industry 4.0 bandwagon. This post looks more in-depth into artificial intelligence (AI). I believe there are possible applications of AI in manufacturing, but at the moment these are still uncommon. In this post I would like to talk a bit about the hype, but also present a few examples of where it actually works. Let me show you:
Pretty much ten years ago, in April 2011, Industry 4.0 was first presented to the audience at the Hannover Messe in Germany. Industry 4.0 made lots of promises about everything getting better and easier. But, <surprise Pikachu>, it did not. Let’s have a look.
You surely know this little orange robot at Amazon commonly known as Kiva, which powers many Amazon Fulfillment Centers. Turns out, there are more robots in use at Amazon, some for similar tasks, some for something completely different. In this post I would like to give you an overview of all the robots at Amazon (that I know of). There’s at least six different robots in action.
This is the fifth post on my series on the inner workings of the Amazon Fulfillment Center. Here I will look at the software that runs behind all the processes and makes this performance possible. Other companies would probably plaster the label “Industry 4.0” all over this, but at Amazon they just do it.
To round up our tour of a van full of nerds to study Industry 4.0 in Germany, here is the report on different presentations and tryouts. These were not plant visits, but different demonstrations by some smaller and one not-so-small (Bosch) companies. The first four were at the Arena 2036, a research collaboration to explore the future of the automobile. The other three were at the respective companies locations. Also quite insightful.
As part of our van full of nerds tour through southern Germany to study Industry 4.0, we also visited two companies, Kärcher and Siemens. Siemens is probably well known to all of you. We went to their Amberg plant where they make programmable logic controllers. Kärcher is a smaller company that makes pressure washers and industrial cleaning machines. Let me show you what we found.
The first plant we visited as our van full of nerds touring southern Germany to study Industry 4.0 was the Bosch wafer fab RtP1 in Reutlingen. Quite impressive. Let me show you what we found:
As one of the stops on our van full of nerds touring southern Germany to study Industry 4.0, we also visited Trumpf. However, we didn’t go to the main plant in Ditzingen but to a much-smaller plant in Gerlingen that makes stamping tools. I have heard a lot of good things about Trumpf Gerlingen, and wanted to see if it is true. Let’s find out: