The competitiveness of global markets, the changing needs of consumers, the ongoing climate and economic changes and, last but not least, unpredictable lockdown situations generated by health emergencies like it’s happening for example with Covid-19, are inevitably pushing companies to rethink their business models.
Flexibility and speed of reaction are two aspects that are becoming extremely important in the management of production processes, as they allow rapid responses to continuous changes; the digitisation of production processes is the right answer to progress in the future. Current factories must become Smart Factories to be able to govern changes through the optimisation of production processes, but what is a smart factory?
Definition of Smart Factory
The smart factory represents a production reality that uses new technologies and new working methods to make production processes flexible and more efficient. This is implemented through the interconnection of all stages of production and all the machines that participate in them, the collection of data, and above all the analysis of the same to identify all the steps that can be improved and optimised. In the digital factory, a key role is played by the simulation of production processes, as it permits to identify the most efficient workflows.
Smart Factory and Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 is the main and most interesting topic for manufacturing companies in recent years. It represents a determining key factor for the continuity of many production companies. Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, represents the advent of digitalisation in the manufacturing industry which is therefore concretised in the Smart Factory. In short, Industry 4.0 represents the process to get to the digital factory – or Smart Factory.
In order to understand the potential of the smart factory, we created AgiLAB, a robocentric interactive laboratory capable of simulating the digitalisation of production processes. If you want to visit our company and discover AgiLAB, contact us. We’ll be happy to show you AgiLAB and its features!
