Development and Practice of Industrie 4.0 in China—Practical Experience of a German Industrial Software Company in China

Abstract

Industrie 4.0 has stirred turbulences in China since its birth in 2011. The struggles of the Chinese manufacturing enterprises towards realizing and adapting Industrie 4.0 in their production processes have given us many new perceptions. These insights and findings can in turn serve as inputs for academics and policy makers to structure or fine tune the development of the next generation of Industrie 4.0. The authors of this paper summarize the knowledge and understandings from their personal engagement assisting the Chinese manufacturing enterprises with digitalization in their production processes. A real-life example shows how a typical Chinese mid-size manufacturing enterprise ended up with new business models when they started out the digitalization journey with a simple goal to increase efficiency. We conclude that the Chinese market will continue to be relevant for the future development of Industrie 4.0.

The Need for Cybersecurity in Industrial Revolution and Smart Cities

“…Third, cyber-physical systems which employ ICT in monitoring, as well as regulating physical systems and processes entail intelligent robots and embedded sensors, since they can be configured to adapt to their immediate product. In other instances, additive manufacturing devices, such as 3D printing devices, are used [ 42 ]. Moreover, the collection of different quantities of information and their exploitation and evaluation within the factory or by having cloud computing and big data analysis, virtualization, simulation, and modeling within the design of a given product, as well as the development of the manufacturing process, and the immense ICT-based support for the human worker, involve augmented reality, robots and cobots, and other intelligent tools [ 43 , 44 ].…”