Industry 4.0

Commonly associated with the Smart Factory concept, it is a cross process that makes the industrial production fully automated and interconnected: equipment, people and devices interact with each other through an intelligent communication system. The manufacturing system becomes more and more dynamic thanks to digitalization: more reactive and flexible, satisfy markets and specific costumers needs.

The main aspect of Industry 4.0 is certainly the communication, that now is used in a completely innovative way: processes thought so far as machine-machine and human-machine change paradigm, taking the shape of a multi-level network, with both active and passive nodes. Classic elements, ad machines and men, don’t change, but new ones are coming: data centres cease to be simply data storage locations, change their shape and move from servers to cloud. Internet is the enabling technology for the development of this: calculations can be done in real time on real data, providing indications to realize simulations and studies of new productive processes.

A new human-machine relationship is born, linked to the information that the machine, appropriately set, can provide: the number of data and the KPIs acquired could stretch to infinity.

Based on the new cornerstones, flexibility and prototyping, the manufacturing systems are able to serve the mass market as the niches, and in parallel to prototype a new product. These are ways that increase the companies competitiveness level because they can reflect benefits also on the quality, now controllable and correctable in real time, of products and production. The digital transformation will allow companies to rapidly overcome competitive gaps.

Cannon accepts the challenge launched by Industry 4.0, doing it through innovative projects, whose main aim is the transformation of production into something really flexible and adaptable to different market demands.

Smart products must be manufactured with smart machines and plants, and their soul must be a software with innovative features, able to interface with a real network made of men, machines and data. Cannon therefore focuses on machinery innovation, pivoting on remote monitoring, predicting maintenance and on integration with the rest of the factory.

In this way machines, once produced and installed at the final costumer, will be monitored and modulated to drastically reduce downtime, optimize productivity and limit energy consumption. These are some of the benefits that contribute to make the factory more competitive.