Advances in Sensor Technologies in the Era of Smart Factory and Industry 4.0

Abstract

The evolution of intelligent manufacturing has had a profound and lasting effect on the future of global manufacturing. Industry 4.0 based smart factories merge physical and cyber technologies, making the involved technologies more intricate and accurate; improving the performance, quality, controllability, management, and transparency of manufacturing processes in the era of the internet-of-things (IoT). Advanced low-cost sensor technologies are essential for gathering data and utilizing it for effective performance by manufacturing companies and supply chains. Different types of low power/low cost sensors allow for greatly expanded data collection on different devices across the manufacturing processes. While a lot of research has been carried out with a focus on analyzing the performance, processes, and implementation of smart factories, most firms still lack in-depth insight into the difference between traditional and smart factory systems, as well as the wide set of different sensor technologies associated with Industry 4.0. This paper identifies the different available sensor technologies of Industry 4.0, and identifies the differences between traditional and smart factories. In addition, this paper reviews existing research that has been done on the smart factory; and therefore provides a broad overview of the extant literature on smart factories, summarizes the variations between traditional and smart factories, outlines different types of sensors used in a smart factory, and creates an agenda for future research that encompasses the vigorous evolution of Industry 4.0 based smart factories.

Predictive Maintenance and Intelligent Sensors in Smart Factory: Review

“…We summarised the intelligent sensor advantages in Figure 10 based on Reference [ 143 ]. Sensitivity is defined as the relation unit change between output and input.…”

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“…The IIoE needs a variety of technologies complementing each other to deliver the enhancements in agility, efficiency, and automation and requires real-time streaming for actionable intelligence, machine learning capabilities for identifying patterns and predicting behavior, XR (AR/MR/VR) to complement manual guidance and training. The 6GIIoE factory platform [22] (p. 143460), [47] (pp. 2-4) analytics software can achieve the following benefits for many industries: (i) makes IoE simple and easy to deploy without writing code, (ii) connects and manages any asset and analyzes any amount of data automatically in real time, turning data into actionable insights to reduce costs and improve efficiencies to build innovative and differentiating applications, and (iii) continuously improve production processes benefiting to visualize analytics for faster decisions, analyzing to solve problems, and monitoring operational performance.…”

Smart Node Networks Orchestration: A New E2E Approach for Analysis and Design for Agile 4.0 Implementation

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