Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, technology has been the prime enabler of productivity in manufacturing. From early mechanics in the 18th century wool industry through the introduction of electrical energy to support mass production nearly two hundred years ago, to the advent in recent decades of factories exploiting intelligent manufacturing technology to drive growth in the automotive and electronics sectors, so production advancement has had technology at its heart.
The next productivity leap in manufacturing is on the horizon. Put simply, this so-called next industrial revolution builds upon existing work that is developing smarter factories for the future; productivity hubs that will use higher levels of distributed intelligence through miniaturised processors, storage units, sensors and transmitters embedded in all conceivable types of machines, unfinished products and materials, as well as smart tools and new software for structuring data flows around a manufacturing facility. The long-term thinking behind the future of manufacturing makes use of embedded technology and refers to this as Cyber Physical Systems that have both a computational element and physical interaction with the real world. Deploying such new technologies and processes will, according to estimates, lead to a 30% increase in industrial productivity.
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