ICT Convergence in Internet of Things - The Birth of Smart Factories (A Technical Note)

Mahmood Adnan, Hushairi Zen Abstract – Over the past decade, most factor ies across developed parts of the world employ a varying amount of the manufacturing technologies including autonomous robots, RF ID (radio frequency identification) technology, NCs ( numerically controlled machines), wireless sensor networks e mbedded with spec ialized computerized softwares for so phisticated produ ct designs, engineerin g analysis, and remote control of ma chinery, etc. The ultimate aim of thes e all dramatic developments in manufacturi ng sector is thus to achieve aspects such as shorter innovation / product life cycles and raising overall productivity via efficien tly handling complex interact ions among the various stages (functions, departments) of a pr oduction line. The notion, Factory of the Future, is an unpredictable heaven of efficaciousnes s, wherein, issues su ch as the flaws and downtime would be issues of the long forgo tten age . This technical note thus provides an overview of this awesom e revolutio n waiting to be soon realized in th e manufacturing sector. Index Terms – Smart Factories, Fourth Indus trial Revolution, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous Computing. I. I NTRODUCTION E often per ceive Factories as d irty and noisy pr oduction amenities over - crowded with manpower and machinery incessantly executin g same tasks again and again with abundant flaws and downtime. But now, Factories are about to get really smarter. We’re rapidly headi ng towards fourth industrialization revolution , wherein , ever yday machin es that bakes sandwiche s to blendin g of coffee and s ophis ticated machines m anufacturing cellular phones and auto mobiles are about to get revolutionized . ‘Smart Factories or Factories of the Future’ (terminolo gies used interchan geably) are said to be em ploying a noti on of ‘Internet of Things’ fo r operating complex m anufacturing process es via hundreds an d thousands of computers depending on the size of a particular i ndustry. Global competition for Smart Manufacturing is undoubtedly ravenous and Germ any has taken this race with introducti on of the first prom ising standard, i.e. I ndustry 4.0; and G overnment has accordingl y invested amount t o the tune of approxi mately €500m for materializing this technology [1, 2]. DFKI – German Artificial Intelligence Research Ce ntre is now regarded as one of the acclaimed research centre s worldwide for production of Smart Factories technology. Euro pean Commission’s wo rth $2 billion project, Factories of Future - P ublic Private Partners hip also aims t o develop footprints / trails of Smart Manu facturing in European U nion. Steps are now being taken to create a global Standard in certain develope d parts of the world such as USA, Mahmood Adnan is associated with the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak in the capacity of Postgraduate Researcher. Hushairi Zen is Deputy Dean (Industry and Communit y Engagement) with the Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. China, Korea, and Japan while the rest of the word still appears at quite a silence. II. S MART F ACTORIES – D EFINIT ION & C HALLENGES Although there is no universal defi nition that defines as pects of Smart Factories, several resear ch groups have their prophetic viewpoints. S mart Factories are actually envisaged on noti on of Internet of Things , referred in the industrial s ector as ‘Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) ’ . The main intent is to empower all the assets / physical things on the shop floors, assembly lines, and batches with digital or virtual voice, which in turn enables them to communicate some sort of information about th emselves (i.e. their status – what are they, wh ere are they, their conditions like temperature, a nd hence so fo rth) . If employed precisely, these interlinked devices from a con vergence point betwee n physical and digital w orld would em power the today’s indust rial systems to transform into much smarter / intelligent systems [2]. Since the data from the shop fl oors (m achine shop), assembly lines, and batches gets connected to a Cloud and is readily mad e observable in real tim e – successful compani es can thus achieve shorter inno vation and pro duct life cycles, can a dd value to their offerings through faster tim e to the market, efficacious product personalization, transparency in their operations, well-informed processes, etc. The real challenge s however lies in achie ving its design principles including (but not limited to) Interope rability, Virtualization, Real-Time Capability, Decen tralization, Service Orientation, and Modularity, etc. C ONCLUSION The Smart Factory is believed to be a proclaimer of the fourth industrial revolutio n, an important swing in the operating norms that are expected to alter t he mode via which the m anufacturing companies today operates. It is just the matter of time; the world would soon see either a b ig IT-Multis, any vision ary automation leader, or a small aspiring start- up to materialize this sphere. R EFERENCES [1] A. Radziwon, A. Bilberg, M. Boge rs, and E. S. Madsen (2014), “The Smart Factory, Exploring Adaptive & Flexible Manufacturing Solutions”, Procedia Engineering, Vol. 69, pp. 1184-1190. [2] S. Wang, J. Wan, D. Zhang, D. Li, C. Zhang (2016), “Towards Sm art Factory for Industry 4.0: A Self-org anized Multi-agent Syste m with Big Data Based Feedback & Coordination” , Com puter Networks (Elsevier), [doi:10.1016/j.com net.2015.12.017]. ICT Convergence in Internet of Things – The Birth of Smart Factories (A T echnical Note) W International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS), Vol. 14, No. 4, April 2016 93 https://sites.google.com/site/ijcsis/ ISSN 1947-5500