Industry 4.0, which can be summarized as computerized production processes, was first announced as an advanced technology investment strategy project of the German Government. “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” or in short “Industry 4.0” was first mentioned at the 2011 Hannover Exhibition, nevertheless has not become a reality until the year 2013.

Within three short years that have passed since then, Industry 4.0 has been showing its effects with deep rooted changes that has been triggered in logistics, quality control then continuing with service, operational management and production processes.

With this article we will speak of a specific topic that have entered our lives with Industry 4.0: Smart Factories.

So, what are these Smart Factories?

Just like our personal devices, production equipment in production plants are getting “smarter” every other day. This process has led the way to the conceptualization and appearance of Smart Factories, where machines speak to each other and replace humans in organizing production. We are faced with the first examples of these plants that can manage themselves both globally and in Turkey.

Smart Factories

Think of a factory; filled with warehouses, depots, ovens, cranes, production conveyors, machinery, robots, people and manufactured goods. A giant plant, where of raw materials arrive, are transferred to related warehouses and moved to production stations; where hundreds, even thousands of components pass through conveyors; where at every hour, every minute and even every second a new component is produced and pass meticulous quality control processes; and finally gets packaged and prepared for distribution. Today, all these processes that take place within a gigantic production chain are controlled manually. Instead, think about a system, where they are controlled autonomously with the use of inter-connected machinery that speak with each other. This is the main idea behind a Smart Factory. A self-managing production plant that manages all processes of production; from procurement to storage, from production to quality control, from distribution to service-repair is not all what Smart Factories have got to offer. They also help to attain razor-thin error margins, minimize losses and waiting times, make procurement, production and distribution plans and subsequently raise ‘efficiency’ – the sine qua non of production.

Smart Factories = Smart Products

When it comes to production and communication of “things”, the communication between products is just as important as the communication between machinery. As products are getting smarter and turning into chatterboxes just like machines, we are inescapably faced with what we can call “Smart Products”. These “Smart Products” do not only possess the information about how, where and when they were produced; additionally they also record which raw materials they have been produced from; but also from which supplier those raw materials were procured from Furthermore, they decide how to be packaged and plan how they will be transported. Smart Products that stay in communication with Smart Factories after production are able to manage their maintenance processes and possess the knowledge as to when their maintenance requirement will arise, when they will require new parts, how long they have been in use and even by whom they are being used. All these valuable information are processed by the machines to direct their users towards their maintenance requirements, therefore expanding their life cycles and raise the perception of quality with the added services they provide their users.

Smart Factories = Big Data Analytics

Smart Factories clearly are not just made up of machines that can communicate thanks to Internet of Things technologies. They also have mechanisms that analyze big data, make decisions and present reports. It is very obvious that they produce Smart Products and mark the quintessential symbols of a new age of production.

Our IoT platform SkywaveloT, which has been developed with 100 percent Innova expertise, has proven itself in Turkey’s first integrated smart city Karaman project. With its modular architecture, SkywaveIoT introduces smart solutions for factories and production zones in addition to stores and cities. With our Smart Factory solutions, we enable centralized Big Data management of all ‘things’, Big Data analysis, presentation to the end user via monitoring and reporting applications and and transforming ‘things’ into decision-makers through rule engines defined on the SkywaveloT platform. Thanks to the SkywaveIoT platform and integrated vertical applications, It is possible to smarten up either a small production line or a whole factory. In order to bring a Smart Factory into reality.