Industry 4.0: A factory straight out of science fiction

AWhen John Wilkinson built a new gun factory in the Midlands in 1776, the English industrial magnate relied on the latest technology of the time. He ordered Boulton & Watt to build a steam engine that had never existed before. After all, she could operate two melting furnaces at the same time – without workers. This “Topsy Turvy Machine” was considered a masterpiece of engineering and marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. 250 years later, the economy hardly revolves around steam, but everything revolves around data – and German control cabinet manufacturer Rittal is working with them on another revolution: Industry 4.0.

In it, everything must be networked with everything else. machines have to talk to machines, systems have to adjust and control themselves. Fully automated work. Computers and software make this possible. If factories with their tall chimneys once looked like huge steam engines, then in the future they will look more like giant computers. Control, memory, arithmetic block, data input and output. The idea came from America, the first concept from Germany. Three researchers introduced it almost exactly ten years ago. Since then, an army of engineers has been turning words into reality.