Markus Lorenz: Industry 4.0: how intelligent machines will transform everything we know

when we think about the future we typically think it will be designed by people like this I believe the next big thing will be crafted by people like that engineers and not just because I am one of them let me show you what I believe engineering is going to be the next big thing and these guys could even be the new hipsters so machines have always been great and done amazing thing for us but we're in the middle of a revolution machines are becoming intelligent I'd like to think of machinery automation a little bit like

our human body we see with our eyes that sensing we move with our hands and arms that's actuation and we process with our brains I mean most of the time that's process control machines have classically Blinn only like the actuation over the past thirty years we added a lot of sensors and sense into the machines but still machines are missing the key thing and that is intelligence and now the fourth Industrial ushion will bring that into life why do we call it fourth first one was the steam machine second one was linear assembly systems people

think about Henry Ford's model-t well actually they were first implemented in the slaughterhouses of Chicago sorry for no better news their third is the robots that entered our factories and forth is now the combination of physical products and the intelligence and data all those elements like autonomous robots additive manufacturing technologies and big data analytics they already exist today so it's starting to happen they are not full-blown yet and they are not connected to each other once they are it'll allow for new ways to produce to design for companies to operate and it will also change

the way how we work in the world of labor you might say well how does this all help us think about the helicopter stuck somewhere in a remote place in Africa it's needed in a food delivery mission the next mechanic is some 17 flight hours away we want to have the chopper back in the air within two hours it's as possible with industry 4.0 we freaked out in seven minutes let's first look at production and let's look at the product we all like food and beverage that's a six hundred billion dollar industry constantly innovating in

order to catch our attention now I grew up in the Black Forest so I love natural food and I spent most most days outside and on top of the three meals provided in our home I needed some extra calories so I used to have those yogurts 500 milliliter a glass they came in four flavors on a very good day I would have all four of them today the very same product from the very same company comes in 96 variants now that's even for me a challenge if you look at the machinery that's behind that that's

some fascinating piece of equipment that is able to fill some twenty four thousands of those yogurts per hour but in essence it is done it will do exactly how it was set up so if we want to fill hazelnut yogurt and we have a chocolate packaging and chocolate label around that the machine will do exactly that and you will have hazelnut yogurt that looks from the outside like chocolate or 24,000 of them per hour now in the best case and this area is detected before the product leaves the factory it will create a quality cost

something that that industry very nicely called product loss it makes up to 8% of the value in food production or some 15 billion dollars annually in the worst case and this error is not detected it may send a not allergic consumer straight from supermarket to emergency room well why does this happen the machine is fast and it can sense but there is no real connection between the two and this would be different in the area of 4.0 each physical product whether it's the yogurt the container or the label will have what we call the digital

twin that's their surrogate in the software world here it is where the machine will detect that nut and chocolate is a mismatch and will stop that process automatically now yogurt is just one example in food and beverage is just one industry and this machine to machine a machine two-part communication is just one application the multitude of such application throughout all industries and normally in engineering we fight very hard to improve an annual improvement of one to two percentage points here we have the opportunity to make production 30% faster and 25% cheaper that's a true leapfrog

so great for production or fascinates me even more is the fact that you can basically reinvade companies this is a harbor crane it's hand its actuation is a motor that's a beautiful piece of equipment that lifts a container as easily as you lift a pencil a company I work with let's call them motors and more manufacturers these brilliant equipment sells them to harbor operators for something like five thousand euros apiece now with a new technology we added sensors to those motors and we built a software model so basically the idea is the motor can sense

and it can sense the real weight in real time of the container as we lift it as opposed to the weight that it's in the paperwork and that might be just a little bit different so basically while lifting the container it sends that data to a software model which then builds a 3d model of the ship again that's the digital twin of that ship and it will tell the motor exactly where to place the next container in order to optimize the weight balancing of the ship and with an optimized weight balancing that ship can save

up to $1,000 a day on fuel that is some five to eight percent gain and fuel efficiency adjust by optimizing the shuffling of the container I think that's quite a big impact just for a reshuffling of it while bringing that technology to into the market we had an idea what if instead of selling that motor as an equipment which charged a couple of send for each weighing and trimming movement that we did so the harbor would only pay if the crane is on duty and four motors and more it would mean that by charging a

couple of cents but a lot of them per year they could make up as much at one thousand euros per year definitely a much more profitable business model than the one we saw before so for companies that know how to adjust to this digital world that's great news but you might say great reproduction great for companies what about us what about human Labor's are we just sitting there and watching as we lose our job to those smart machines and the simple answer to that is yes there's certain mechanical work that will not be needed anymore

think about moving stuff in a factory checking I'll be filling hazelnut in a chocolate container that is not needed anymore machines will do that automatically if you look at an economy like Germany over the next ten years that means some 600,000 jobs will be gone but there's more to that with new technology new business models and newer tasks emerge think about motors and more they will need a lot of software programmers data analysts and 3d models that will result in a gain of about 1 million new jobs in an economy like Germany so net we

have a gain of 400,000 jobs so you might say wait a second that might be interesting for the economy but what if I didn't go to school and learn the right things the software modeling the likes will I be out of a job again I have a different view on that today your employer looks a lot at your education and your years of experience but we can change that with technology think back about that helicopter stuck in Africa and remote place and think about what if you had an argumentative glass on your head connected to

a central computer that would know everything and every detail about that machine you could basically perform the repair action that necessary because it would tell you again as an overlay of the real world that's again the digital twin where to place your tools which parts to repair and you could suddenly fix a helicopter as easy as a picture book I sometimes think of it as if my grandma used to be a farmer could suddenly fix a helicopter even if the first time she touches one so overall I'm really excited about this new opportunity in this

new world of connected machinery and industry 4.0 machines will not be able to do the work on their own interaction with humans will remain a critical success factor some of the low-skilled jobs that might disappear they will be replaced by new skilled jobs yet there is no firm answer yet on how this transition will to be is to be managed however when I look back at the engineering friends we saw at the beginning I am sure that their curiosity and decorative 'ti would lead us to new and better ways to master our business and personal

lives thank you