(Continued from last time)
What appears to be happening is that there is a confusion between what attributes are and what lives in the new environment. The first 3 industrial eras follow the same approach taken as with our nuclear and geological analogy, but suddenly in Industry 4.0 there are many that think the attributes that define the era are the results and not the core distinguishing attributes.
To me, this is like trying to define a baseball game as the experience of hot dogs, Cracker Jack, and the crowd. Yes, indeed these are part of a baseball game, but they are also part of many other games or activities. They don't define the game.
Take for example faster computing. Is this really an attribute that distinguishes Industry 4.0 from Industry 3.0? A casual glance at Moore's Law refutes that notion. Google "Moore's Law" and look at the graph. Do you see any inflection points? From 1970 to the present you will see a rather linear curve, with the data points rather closely fitting the curve. I do not see the slope suddenly change in 2010, which is about when most people think Industry 4.0 began. All through Industry 3.0, which began around 1970 with the introduction of PLC/SCADA/DCS/QCS, Moore's law kept chugging along. Did we begin a new industrial era every time Moore's Law doubled the number of transistors per millimeter? If so, we would now be in the Industry 25 era.
Therefore, the Industry 4.0 Lexicon team has consistently presented the following table to define the industrial eras:
Industry 0 (Muscle) Industry was powered by humans, animals, and water (gravity).
Industry 1 (Steam) The piston engines of Newcomen, Leopold, and Watt replaced muscle power with steam.
Industry 2 (Electricity) Edison and Tesla provided the means of harnessing electrical power for industrial use.
Industry 3 (Computers) Digital converters and processors enabled automation of human activities in industry (DCS, SCADA, etc.).
Industry 4 (Internet) A public network infrastructure for the entire planet enabled connectivity of industrial facilities with minimal effort and investment, which yields capabilities such as remote monitoring, cloud hosting of interconnected MES/ERP, enterprise wide optimization, etc.
In this table, it is made clear that the inflection point of Internet connectivity in industry leads to the new environment. It is this fundamental attribute which makes the environment; it is not the environment making the attribute.
So, if you were transported back in time to a paper mill of the past and had to figure out whether it was using Industry 4.0 capabilities, you would not be looking at the processors or the algorithms. You would find out if the process was connected to the outside world through the Internet. Regardless of the application in question, Internet connectivity makes it Industry 4.0.
At this point, some of you may be wondering why all the fuss? Who cares about wading through all of this to define what many have been talking about for a decade?
It might be a bit over dramatic, but I think many of you know that most industrial accidents and other disasters in our industry have a common denominator: communication. If we cannot understand each other, should we be surprised when things go horribly wrong?
An example is PID control. It predates Industry 3.0, since it was first implemented in analog form before digital processors. It is ubiquitous; you have hundreds if not thousands of PID loops in your mills. Yet, it is well known many of them are poorly tuned, if tuned at all. Even in cases where the derivative term might help you, many don't dare touch it because they don't understand it. Right now, I am working on the ISA 5.9 committee to resolve some of the confusing terminology for PID we have had in industry all these years. Isn't it amazing that after all this time we are trying to get PID to perform in a way that helps instead of hurts, and that the inability to communicate is part of the problem?
I am also hearing some feedback from our Beta that this lexicon is making things worse by using these buzzwords. The sentiment seems to be that if we minimize the use of unhelpful buzzwords, the problems will go away. That won't happen. We have heard these buzzwords for about a decade already and they aren't going away. Every time someone uses IIoT, Digital Twin, Machine Learning, and the like without a common understanding, it makes things worse. If we are going to make sound investments, get the results we expect, and avoid disasters, we are going to have to be able to communicate.
The nuclear era is still with us. There is still nuclear waste that we haven't figured out how to handle and warheads that could destroy the planet. Like the nuclear era, the Industry 4.0 has the promise of fantastic capability that can make our industry cleaner, safer, and more sustainable. While the Industry 4.0 challenges I present here may not be clear and present danger on the same magnitude as nuclear threats, unless we get to the nucleus of what Industry 4.0 is, this era may be very disappointing if not disastrous.
