Industry 4.0 and IoT

"Industry 4.0" and "IoT" are just marketing gags.
The modernisation of all life areas with new technologies is an ongoing progess done since ever and not a suddenly neccessary step.
But it is nice from the world wide politicians and economists honorig our (the engineers) work we did the last decades.

Industry 4.0

The concepts for Industry 4.0 are old

• Automatic reordering and supply management using BMEcat (1999)
• Computer integrated manufacturing in graphical industry with "JDF, Job Definition Format" (1999)
• Intelligent vehicle systems e.g. self driving forklifts in autonomous warehouses (2005)
• ...

IoT (Internet of Things)

It is the slogan for collecting device information evaluating it and controlling devices using the internet standards.
Software Layer: In real industry production scenarios the existing internet standards are not suitable due to fundamental design concepts (TCP/IP) in particular the not predictable response times.
Physical Layer: In addition the traditional physical ethernet hardware is not suitable in the near of high power production machines.

The concepts for IoT are old

• Jungheinrich built forklifts having wireless telemetry (1998)
• Machines communicating among themselves in a "Balanced Digital Multipoint Systems" via the RS485 bus (2002)
• Automatic re-ordering of printer supplies for production printer "Minolta BizHub1050" via GSM-modem (2004)
• ...

The Future

The future of IoT depends on finding suitable secure standards for interconnections.