Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): HKIE Seminar on Industry 4.0: The 4th Industrial Revolution

2015年8月20日星期四

HKIE Seminar on Industry 4.0: The 4th Industrial Revolution

The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE) – Manufacturing & Industrial Division and The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) co-organized the seminar named “Industry 4.0: The Fourth Industrial Revolution” on 20th Aug 2015. Industry 4.0 is a vision of tomorrow’s manufacturing. Under this platform, products have finding their way independently through the product process. In intelligent factories, machines and products communicate with each other, cooperatively driving production. Before the seminar, I (HKSQ) took a photo with my old friend Ir. Dr. YC Chau.

Firstly, Ir. Dr. Jackson Tang (HKIE-MIE committee member) as MC introduced our guest speaker Ir. Dr. YC Chau. Ir. Dr. Chau has been working in TDK (Tokyo Denki Kagaku) Corporation since 1988, where he is currently the vice president of China operation improvement group. His PhD degree received from CityU in 2012.

In the beginning, Ir. Dr. YC Chau (Vice President, China Operation Improvement Group, TDK) presented what is Industry 4.0. He introduced previous three times of industry revolution form the 1st (Power Generation Mechanical Automation) to 2nd (Industrialization) and then to 3rd (Electronic Automation). In 2015, the 4th industry revolution (Smart Automation) is equal to Industry 4.0.

Then Dr. Chau briefed USA stated White House SMART Manufacturing, Japan mentioned Factories Connected Together, China has talking about Made in China 2025, and Germany promoted German Manufacturing DNA. The following diagram showed that China and India enhancing their global nominal manufacturing gross value added continuously. That’s why Germany initiated Industrial 4.0. This term was first used in 2011 at the Hanover Fair. Then the working group on Industry 4.0 which chaired by Siegfried Dais (Robert Bosch GmbH) and Kagermann (acatech) presented a set of Industry 4.0 implementation recommendations to the German federal government in October 2012. The final report of the working group Industry 4.0 was presented at the Hanover Fair on 8 April 2013.

Dr. Chau agreed with SIEMENS Vision of Industry 4.0 that “A vision of tomorrow’s manufacturing: Products finding their way independently through the production process. In intelligent factories, machines and products communicate with each other, cooperatively driving production.” After that he introduced three Key Technology of Industry 4.0 and they were Big Data, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cybert Physical Systems (CPS).

For Big Data, Dr. Chau discussed its usage from “within Workshop” to “within Factory” and then extended to “within Supply Chain”. Then he showed us some videos about Big Data (See reference). He also said Big Data analysis could create predictable model
For IoT, it connected among Users, Enterprise, Partner and Things. Video of Intel’s Vision of IoT was showed.

For Cyber Physical System (CPS), 3C model of CPS was mentioned where 3C for Computation, Communication and Control. Dr. Chow said employing CPS was very expensive and one example was MTR Operations Control Centre. He told us MTR should be no need to have driver actually but citizen had not ready to accept it.

Dr. Chau said from the integration of Big Data, IoT and CPS, we got from Industrial 4.0 was “4S” where 4S stands for Smart Factory, Smart Products, Smart Process and Smart Services. He raised some companies as example and told us Germany company had highly standardization which could help them to transfer to Industrial 4.0. (e.g. IKEA has two standardization factors – DIY & Flat Packing.) Dr. Chow concluded that Industrial 4.0 created addition value and business opportunity.

Finally, Dr. Chau introduced China’s “Internet +” that means some extra value added on something through internet but not something plus internet “+ Internet”! Moreover, Make in China 2025 strategy was briefed. China planned to use next 30 years to achieve a leading position in the world (in 2045). So the first step was set to be big manufacturing country in 2025. Then next step was China to be strong manufacturing country in 2035. The following diagram demonstrated the 5 key engineering areas and 10 key fields to be developed in near future. However, Make in China 2025 and Germany Industry 4.0 had a big gap (see the video in reference).