What will smart factory look like in the near future of 2019?

1. Industrial Robot Industrial Robotics

According to a recent article by the strategic agency McKinsey & Company,

The Philips plant in the Netherlands, which produces electric shaving machines, is said to have robots overtaking workers, with a ratio of 14 to 1. With the wave of new plant automation flooding in, new environments and new values are creating.

One of the reasons driving this trend is that co-robots, or co-robots, are cheaper, more reliable, and more flexible than conventional models, allowing them to work with human workers safely.

2. Integrated OT/IT convergence of operational technology and information technology Although operating technology (OT) and information technology (IT) have long been separated from other data sources, the fact that combining these two isolated data can provide valuable insight into manufacturing performance is becoming increasingly apparent. This insight enables rapid response to machine-generated problems as well as compliance with manufacturing schedules, reduced downtime. As in the case of ABB and HP in 2017~2018, OT and IT have been able to form partnerships, and more partnerships will be available in 2019~2020.

3. AI Rise of AI

Artificial intelligence is the core of a smart factory, enabling manufacturers to predict demand patterns and allocate resources much more accurately. In other words, AI can give manufacturers a more cold, data-driven answer to a given problem than a human guess. At the Oracle Open World event to be held in September 2017, Vice President Steve Miranda introduced Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps, a new cloud-based smart factory application that is provided with embedded AI. The app is built into software that supports complex decision-making science and yet uses it to perform routine tasks in a form that users do not recognize.

4. Additive manufacturing 3D printers are becoming cheaper, faster, more accurate, and available in a variety of materials, making them increasingly popular not only for prototype types but for final products. This method is called additive manufacturing because it removes layers of material given, such as cutting, drilling, and hammering, and puts different layers into existing layers, unlike conventional manufacturing methods that produce off-site products. This opens the way to create a variety of personalized products from mass-produced products, including sneakers tailored to the user's feet, custom bumper and cars equipped with spoiler.