Whether you call it Industry 4.0, the smart factory, or Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), technology and the need for increased efficiency and reduced waste are pushing manufacturing toward a revolution in how we produce things.

The MD&M East, Atlantic Design & Manufacturing, EastPack, ATX East, PLASTEC East, and Quality Expo came to New York this week.

At IMTS 2018, like at any industrial trade show, the predominant theme was Industry 4.0. Although Industry 4.0 still has not scaled up to cover a significant percentage of manufacturing setups, its vision of near-total automation—and the promise of resulting cost savings—has clearly captured the industry’s imagination.

What is Industry 4.0? This buzzword seems to have been thrown around for quite some time now. How is it affecting today’s NDT manufacturing processes compared to the past? What new technologies have risen from Industry 4.0 in the past few years to benefit NDT? To answer all these questions, it is important to look back and understand how it came to be.

In the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei discovered that he could focus his telescope to examine small objects up close. Around 1620, it is believed that Cornelius Drebbel invented the compound microscope. In the 1670s, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek began experimenting with very high-magnification, single-lensed microscopes that he designed himself. 

For quality professionals, the modern 3D smart sensor has moved to the center of conversations around quality in the automated age. Though 2D imaging remains popular, the rising affordability and strategic advantages of 3D vision for the smart factory are difficult to overstate. 

Easy ain’t easy. Sounds like something said by cultural catchphrase artist and legendary baseball player Yogi Berra, but it sums up a conversation I had at a recent tradeshow in Atlanta.

If you talk to anyone in manufacturing today about the future of the industry, you’re likely to hear a quizzical, “Do you mean Industry 4.0?”

In the face of global skills shortages and rapidly emerging Industry 4.0 trends, Taiwanese CNC machine manufacturer Hartford undertook to develop an innovative, easier-to-use human machine interface (HMI) for its CNC machines. At the same time the company strived to ensure process measurement and inspection at its CNC machine manufacturing operations could keep pace with ever-improving product quality goals.

Ordertrak and Acumatica Cloud ERP to empower manufacturing & distribution companies in the Industry 4.0 era.