Market trends for Industry 4.0
As we already saw glimpses of IoT market trends, let us now have a overview of what Industry 4.0 holds for 2017.
- Manufacturing
It is going to be surprising for people who think rapidly changing, customer-specific mass production is a dream for future to accomplish. Industry 4.0 manufacturing architecture which is fast, customized and automated is soon expected to become a reality. It seems futuristic fantasy but we will soon see some amazing implementations of it. It will take time for the industries that are mass production centralized and sophisticated. But some new, small and decentralized organizations units are expected to see the ray of light to meet customized individual needs.
- IIoT Platforms
IIoT platforms are blooming almost everywhere. Organizations are integrating data hubs fir storage, processing and analyzing the data. It is a wild growth phase which is sure to persist for next two years. We will also witness increasing demand of device integration, data management, device management like software updates and also business process management. IIoT applicants are also looking for easy-to -use connectors which are fast and simple to deploy.
- Industry 4.0 data integration
We live in a diversified world and it will remain this way in the future. In IoT, elements like big data, machine learning and analytics play a big role. But the issue is to combine the diversified data that is created by each individual in a meaningful way. IoT elements needs to utilized to its optimum utilization power to do so.
- Users become Industry 4.0 vendors
In near future, we will witness typical enterprise users who have experience of IoT or Industry 4.0 trying to market their knowledge and expertise to external customers. This is how enterprise users are entering in the Industry 4.0 and IIoT market. They offer their own technological developments and may even offer consulting and integration services.
- IoT Ecosystems
In current scenario, where economy is highly interconnected, the strength of network plays a vital role rather than the size of company to determine the revenues. This particular concept is critical in Industry 4.0. Iot Ecosystem is expanding frequently and will soon provide complimentary micro services. Increasing number of partners are attracted when there is a strong business model and core solutions which depends on the maintenance of network. An intense competition will soon emerge between top notch IoT ecosystems. All these will have great impact on industries too which will help Industry 4.0 to a greater extent.
Understanding new robotics trends
Robots are advancing with each passing day. They are getting lightweight, faster, smaller, simpler and less expensive for a specific load capabilities. With robots, components like connectors and cables are also evolving. The robotics technology today is expanding its use beyond automotive applications.
For example, six-axis robots are usually installed on places to shuffle from one task to another. Cables have to meet these level of mobility demands that can provide plug-and-play functions to connect the robot to- maybe the ‘seventh-axis’, providing robot to move in multi-direction.
Let us look at the example from another point of view. A painting robot is now capable of switching from one shade of paint to another in less than ten seconds with least amount of waste. Furthermore, cables are becoming lightweight and more compact by instilling new technologies like foamed materials and thin jackets to both protect and reduce the size of cable yet not compromising with power capacity and performance.
Strategies to incorporate multiple functions like transmitting control signals, media lines and power supply lines for oil and compressed air within the same cable are also available in the market. Next, choices between exterior and interior cabling too, is developing. This would be beneficial for space constraints and cumbersome wiring.
Thus, future considerations and upfront planning for choice of cable can be really beneficial in long run that can help reduce the machine downtime, thereby, improving the efficiency of robots.