The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, has brought technology that takes advantage of the data that companies produce and receive daily. This data-centric approach allows industries to react faster to issues in the production line, to improve maintenance, to reach the daily production targets, to focus on what is important, to reduce costs and to improve quality.

How can industrial plants get the benefits of the Industry 4.0?

First at all, let's take a look at the technologies that comprise Industry 4.0. There are eight main technologies that are disrupting the industry right now: Big Data (Analytics), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality, Internet of Things (IoT), Cybersecurity, the Cloud, Additive Manufacturing, and Augmented Reality.

Each one of these technologies are based on data; therefore, the more data you have the more benefits you can get.

The three key elements to have timely and quality data are: collection, centralization, and distribution. This is when our Digital Plant service can help you by using the same technologies that Industry 4.0 offers.

The first step is to define the KPIs of the plant. This step can be easy to write down, but sometimes the implementation is a nightmare.

For example: how to classify red and green apples? what is the speed of the production line? what time will the daily target be reached? How many workers are in a specific station? Some of these KPIs are measured by having inspectors in the production line, but the data collected is prone to error, is registered only in spreadsheets, and is collected at the end of the shift.

Our Digital Plant solution implements video analytics powered by AI to measure visible KPIs in the production line, giving real-time information to managers to take actions and estimating automatically when the daily target will be reached.

One of the solutions that have helped to improve the efficiency of the production line is to publish on a screen in real-time: the target, the % of achievement, and the ETA to reach the target. Workers in the production line use these KPIs to get the right pace to reach the target before the shift ends.

Also. Digital Plant uses IoT and the existing PLCs to collect the data to measure the plant KPIs. There are several sensors that help to count, to classify and to measure, not only the products in the production line, but also the vital signs of the machines, like temperature, frequency, and vibration.

All this information is registered in a centralized database in order have one source of the truth. Having this centralized database allows to generate customized dashboards, to send automatic daily reports, to observe trends, and to calculate individual/group performances, among others benefits.