In the 1970’s Dr Armand Feigenbaum coined the term ‘Hidden Factories’ to talk about the hidden part of organisations where as much 40% of production capability was lost through inefficiency. Finding these weak spots proved difficult until very recently. An exponential increase in data processing power has led to a fourth industrial revolution, or industry 4.0 where more information about processing and operations is available than ever before. This means that manufacturing companies are now able to take advantage of the Industrial Internet of Things to understand and identify elements of the hidden factory and simultaneously bring in new technologies, converting regular factories into smart factories. 

Alex Godbehere from the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre explains the new technologies being tested for smart factories of the future and Andrew Scheer from Pathfindr demonstrates that the process of implementing data collection technology is easier than most people think.

Guests

Andrew Scheer, Marketing Director, Pathfindr

Alex Godbehere, Technical Fellow for Smart Factories, AMRC

Resources

For more information on Pathfindr, click here

For more information on AMRCs Factory Plus blueprint, click here

To listen to Episode 33 ‘Factories of the Future’, click here

Partner 

The partner for this episode is Pathfindr. Pathfindr works with companies in advanced manufacturing, implementing a range of data collection and real time asset intelligence tools, to allow factories to better understand their hidden factory and operate more efficiently.

The post #168 Industry 4.0: Finding the Hidden Factory first appeared on Engineering Matters.