Enabling Technologies for Smart Factories

The concept of Smart Factory was born and developed in Germany starting from 2011 thanks to Industry 4.0, an initiative of the German government to relaunch the German manufacturing industry hit by the financial crisis of previous years. The objective of this book is to provide the reader with an overview of the technologies enabling the Smart Factory, to understand their functioning, its implementation and the main challenges associated with it. According to the Boston Consulting Group, the enabling technologies for Industry 4.0, hence the Smart Factory, are the following (in alphabetical order): Additive Manufacturing Augmented Reality Autonomous Robotics Big Data Analytics Cloud Computing Cybersecurity Internet of Things IT systems integration Simulation Virtual Reality To them, it is necessary to add a series of other concepts that can actually be considered integrated into previous technologies, that is: Human-Machine Interface devices Digital Twin Blockchain This book is an extrapolation of the chapters of Part II of my previous book “Industry 4.0 User Guide”, which aims to provide a complete overview of the principles, causes, impacts and requirements of Industry 4.0. For those who are interested, I strongly recommend it. With this book, however, I wanted to provide users with a practical manual focused solely on the use of associated tools / technologies, at a more accessible price. The information collected in this book is the result of both research and practical use on the field. For this reason, I will provide some ideas on how to apply them to solve real problems in a shopfloor.