Get Ready for the Industrial Internet

It goes by different names – the Industrial Internet, the Internet of Things, and Industry 4.0. All of these terms describe the next revolution in manufacturing as seen by visionaries across a spectrum of industries. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, you should be. Experts are saying it will fundamentally change the way business involving any type of machine is conducted.

A little background: The term Internet of Things, proposed by Kevin Ashton at MIT in 1999, describes a system where the Internet is connected to the physical world via ubiquitous sensors, primarily radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution – is a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, which has set aside 200 million euros to promote the computerization of manufacturing. Championed by companies such as Siemens, the goal is for machines to perform self-diagnosis, cognition, and intelligent support of workers in an increasingly complex workplace. The Industrial Internet, coined by GE engineers, refers to the integration of complex physical machinery with networked sensors and software.

A whitepaper, “The Industrial Internet@Work,” by Marco Annuziata and Peter C. Evans, was recently published on GE’s website. The authors note that maintaining the jet engines on the world’s current fleet of aircraft requires 205 million labor-hours annually, valued at about $10 billion. If the number of jetliners in operation globally grows during the next 20 years as Boeing, Airbus, and Bombardier have predicted, the labor and costs will increase dramatically.

How can these costs be blunted? The report’s authors conclude that software, analytics, and mobile connections will help industrial workers to reduce labor time and costs significantly.

The connections part is the most critical, in my view. Already, there is a lot of data available to decision makers, and managing that information – often referred to as Big Data – will become a greater challenge as the glut of information increases. Technologies are rapidly evolving to improve productivity and include cloud computing (some examples featured in this issue), wireless connectivity, intelligent machines with sensors able to communicate their health and performance data, simultaneous collaboration via social media, and 3D visualization software to simulate outcomes with virtual reality. Some of these technologies are already in use, such as commercial aircraft that signal maintenance data in-flight to awaiting MRO providers. The benefits are more efficient use of resources, less downtime, and lower costs dealing with unscheduled maintenance. The benefits can be obtained from a shop’s machining centers as well as from jet engines, according to predictive-analytics service providers promoting machine-intelligence-relayed-to-humans technology.

But there’s a catch. This new age of industry will require employees with new skills. Many of the skills that will be required are blends of current abilities, such as mechanical engineering and software writing, while cyber security, data engineering, and machine learning (artificial intelligence) experience also will be in demand.

“Taking full advantage of the Industrial Internet will require a fundamental change in the way that business operations are organized,” Annuziata and Evans conclude. “Firms will probably need to create a talent pool of their own by drawing upon their most versatile (and adventurous) employees.”

Are you currently recruiting people and encouraging employees to fill these roles in your business? If so, we’d like to learn about it. Send your stories to ebrothers@gie.net. – Eric