Industry 4.0: Opportunity or hype?

DUESSELDORF, Germany—Over the years, K Show trade fairs have featured some strong technology themes, metallocene resins, nanomaterials, electric molding machines and biopolymers among them, but few if any match the prominence gained by the buzzword for this year's event.

Almost every pre-show announcement from machinery exhibitors at K2016 features some reference to Industry 4.0—the term first coined in Germany for the “fourth industrial revolution”—the application of digital technologies to integrate automated manufacturing and supply-chain processes.

Indeed, armed with this relatively new networking concept and “smart factory” technologies, major machinery suppliers are now said to be reinventing themselves as ‘suppliers of flexible production systems for IT-networked production.

Setting the scene, German plastics and rubber machinery association the VDMA intends to “bring Industry 4.0 to life” at K 2016: presenting real-life examples to show how the concept is already improving production efficiency in plastics and rubber machinery manufacturing.

As a preview, the association has posted practical examples of Industry 4.0 in action at 24 of its member companies on a website specially developed for the show. The site also provides a technology overview on Industry 4.0 in plastics and rubber machinery manufacturing.

Among the participants in the VDMA initiative is Coperion, which supplies compounding systems, dosing systems and bulk materials plants.

Coperion's background is in conventional machinery manufacturing backed by know-how in production engineering and process engineering, notes Peter von Hoffmann, head of business unit engineering plastics and special applications.

“But, we only gain the best advantage by networking the individual components in plant manufacturing,” von Hoffmann said. “We use intelligent control technology to analyze the individual process data so that the manufacturing process can be continually optimized. In this way, we create added value for our customers.”

But this new term, and the process and plant networking that accompany it, seems to mean different things to different people: some companies offering enterprise-wide Industry 4.0 solutions, others focused far more on shopfloor level.

Among the rubber specialists at K2016, Desma will, for instance, showcase its SmartConnect 4.U platform product range, which intelligently networks machines, components, applications and systems. This, says the Fridingen, Germany-based machinery maker, offers rubber molders new ways to increase competitiveness.

The SmartConnect 4.U range, claims Desma, “allows production processes to be realized in a more flexible, efficient and resource-friendly way by applying intelligent networking. The new systems make a higher plant and machine uptime, a more transparent and improved product quality or piece cost oriented production efficiency possible.”

The offering from another rubber molding machines maker REP is more defined. The French company will showcase a new generation of its RepNet supervision software and mobile app. Comprising 11 modules, the REP Pack 4.0 allows for real-time monitoring and workshop modeling, centralized management of mold settings and productivity calculations, the company said.

The biggest polymer machinery companies—those with plastics molding interests—are generally in the “big Industry 4.0” camp.

Arburg, for example, is promising to show “how Industry 4.0 technologies and the incorporation of online customer wishes in the value chain can be used to achieve new business models.”

At K2016, Arburg will show a fully IT-networked and automated injection-molding production line combined with a unit for industrial additive manufacturing and a seven-axis robot.

Likewise, KraussMaffei, now owned by ChemChina, said it will bring “numerous Industry 4.0 solutions and unique products and technologies” to K2016.

In the intelligent machines area, KraussMaffei has added a new expanded function APC Plus, which detects process fluctuations that can be caused by changing ambient conditions or fluctuating viscosity and takes countermeasures automatically. Along with the processing of thermoplastics, this function is also suitable for multi-component injection molding and processing silicone.

But it is the shopfloor-level Industry 4.0 technologies that are likely to gain most attention in Duesseldorf.

Engel, for example, will present a “world-first” production process in which a new interdental brush is produced as a single molding with up to 500 bristles molded directly with the core and the grip.

Within a highly integrated, automated production cell, the molded parts are camera inspected and automatically packed and dispatched every four seconds.

To compensate for fluctuations in the ambient conditions or raw material, Engel's inject 4.0 technology provides shot-by-shot, weight control analysis of the pressure profile at screw positions and adjusts both the switchover point and the injection profile to the current conditions.

The above are just a small sample of the Industry 4.0-themed displays and presentations lined up for K2016. The challenge for visitors to the show will be to learn what Industry 4.0 exactly means for their operations and how it might benefit their operations.

This means filtering out the hype and scoping out the opportunities of process- and plant-networking. They would also do well to identify any potential pitfalls in areas such as standardization, network communications and cyber security.

Whether Industry 4.0 lives up to its billing as a true ‘game-changer' for the plastics and rubber processing industries or is just another fad will depend ultimately on its take-up by product manufacturers around the world.