The end of mass production?

I came across an old article a couple of weeks back about Toyotas history. The story about the masters of lean management, very efficient automotive production and at the side some figures from their (at that time) last year. Toyota sold 8.5 million cars that year. On average only 5 have been the same - [...]

By |2014-07-18T11:36:00+00:00June 21st, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on The end of mass production?

RFID & Industry 4.0

We talked a lot of industry 4.0 theory in our recent blogs. Now we found a video (in english) which shows you industry 4.0 in action. The video explains unique codes, shows RFID steered logistics and mentions benefits of collaboration along supply chains. You can't show the overall complexity in just 5 minutes but we [...]

By |2014-07-16T21:06:23+00:00May 29th, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on RFID & Industry 4.0

industry 4.0 – the big picture

In the past weeks we talked a bit about industry 4.0, cyber physical systems, smart manufacturing which all are part of the fourth industrial revolution. Generally speaking the "internet of things" will be created. Every machine, products and humans get connected. It still is a vision and experts think it will take the next 20 years [...]

By |2014-07-16T21:07:27+00:00April 12th, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on industry 4.0 – the big picture

cyber-physical systems

Today I'd like to continue to talk about the future of manufacturing. In recent blogs we described what industry 4.0 means and how smart factories work. In both articles I mentioned a lot technical expressions and talked about computer chips which are responsible for the workflow or the organisation of entire supply chains. To make [...]

By |2014-07-16T21:07:52+00:00April 7th, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on cyber-physical systems

smart manufacturing

In our previous blog about industry 4.0 we discussed smart factories. We got a couple of responses. Many of them where questions so we decided to bring a bit more light into the buzz word tunnel. What are we having today? Today many manufacturers produce very large quantities. Economies of scale are important is the [...]

By |2014-04-07T23:42:31+00:00March 26th, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on smart manufacturing

industry 4.0

One of the "new" buzz words around is industry 4.0 - It creates some specific hype in manufacturing because the industry starts talking about smart factories. The term refers to no less then the fourth industrial revolution. As in all previous industrial revolutions experts expect an increased living standard, more efficiency and better productivity. little history [...]

By |2014-04-23T07:32:47+00:00March 24th, 2014|future manufacturing|Comments Off on industry 4.0