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In those dark factories in the late 1800s, the sweat of our great grandparents mixed with the steam of early manufacturing. The steam engine worked alongside the man in mechanically aided production. That was Industry 1.0.
Our grandparents lay mortar on the stone of their parents, with electricity and the assembly line. Their burden was not as heavy with division of labor, but it was specific and skilled. Course machinery whirred tirelessly, absorbing amperage, while pouring out heat and product. That was the early 1900s.
In the 1970s, our mothers and fathers, as well as we, sat in a brightly lit computer-controlled wonder. Computer Numeric Control (CNC) changed how everything was made overnight. Almost all machine operations are automatic. Repetition is high, skilled machinists rare, but it's the evolution of how we build things. Dubbed Industry 3.0, it was the introduction of computing in the factory, and has been that way up to today, 2015.
What's next might remove people from the factory altogether, though.
General Electric calls it "The Industrial Internet." The Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition (SMLC) has another name: "Smart Manufacturing." SMLC, prominent in the U.S., hopes to promote the adaption of "Manufacturing Intelligence."
"Industry 4.0" is already here, a term coined by the German Government in 2011-12 (called "Industrie 4.0"). Although this term was the product of a contracted "think tank," it's a good phrase to describe the manufacturing world of the next generation. What else could it mean, but the incorporation of the Internet and all of its fruit?
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Within Industry 4.0, smart factories consist of three branches:
- The Internet of Services, aka the cloud: It is a deliverer of services. It shares resources such as applications, content, databases, records, storage, computing power, and networks among all those who are connected.
- Cyber-physical systems: These represent the connectivity between digital and physical. Embedded systems, e.g. smartphones with all of their sensors and connectivity, fall...