October 2019

www.smartmachinesandfactories.com October 2019 | 43 | | SMART INDUSTRY CONFERENCE SPECIAL PREVIEW | L ucian Dold, general channel and product marketing manager for the EMEA Region at Omron Industrial Automation Europe, says “There are a lot of companies talking about Industry 4.0 right now. Yet this topic is nothing new.” Industry 4.0 is defined as ‘the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies’. However, does this really breakdown exactly what it means for consumers and the manufacturing industry? Dold believes one of the main problems is that the term Industry 4.0 is too broad a term and means something different to everyone - is it big data, AI or sensor networks? He argues that although all these technologies are part of Industry 4.0, it is the results that are more important. What advantages does the evolution into Industry 4.0 bring? To that end, we can look at two approaches. New factory concepts “NEAR” stands for Networked, Effective, Agile, and Responsible. For producers, having a “NEAR” factory Smart Machines & Factories spoke to Lucian Dold, general channel & product marketing manager at Omron Europe, about what Industry 4.0 really means for manufacturers. What does ‘Industry 4.0’ really mean for manufacturers?