Most people trace the origin of Digital Twins to a speech made by Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan in 2002. In this speech he addressed all the key elements of digital twins and laid the foundation for what would become a key pillar of the Industry 4.0 movement. But it wasn’t until 2017 that digital twins began to emerge as a key technology trend. It was the spread of IoT devices, both
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is becoming a hot topic within business communities, but few people are fully up-to-speed. Industrial journalists struggle to keep up with the trends as Industry 4.0 proliferates, and technological innovations come thick and fast. Throw in a lingering pandemic, a global chip shortage, and the war in Ukraine, and things get even murkier. To clarify the state of IIoT heading in 2023, this article will break down some
What is RTLS Technology? There is a growing interest in RTLS (Real-time Location Systems) as part of the wider Industry 4.0 and “smart manufacturing” discussion. In recent years, RTLS systems have proliferated within the manufacturing, logistics, and engineering sectors. Companies with a better understanding of these technologies and their potential benefits are poised to profit from the increased efficiency, forecasting, and safety associated with their usage. What is RTLS Technology? How Does RTLS Work?
Industry 4.0 is changing the way businesses operate, and asset tracking is a key part of this transformation. With the right tools and procedures in place, asset tracking can optimize production processes, improve asset utilization, improve safety and provide real-time visibility into the status of assets and processes Asset tracking is the process of tracking the location and status of physical assets and people. This can be done manually or through the use
Ever since Ransom Olds introduced the automotive assembly line in 1901, and Henry Ford the moving conveyor in 1913 we’ve pretty much been building cars the same way: cramming processes into fixed workstations. The fixed workstation is a very simple concept. Step 1: define the takt-time based on planned production volume, typically around 60 seconds for high volume. Step 2: set the line speed and workstation size to create 60s workstations. Step 3: divide
The barcode was first imagined in 1948 by Joseph Woodland, inspired by the dots and dashes of Morse code. Woodland was responding to a challenge set by a local retailer in Philadelphia, looking to find ways to speed up the process of checking-out in stores. By the 1960’s, an engineer, David Collins revived this idea and, combined with the availability of lasers, was putting thick and thin striped lines on railway cars so they
Have you ever wondered where all these contact-tracing and social-distancing solutions came from? It’s not like they were developed and ready to roll out – the use of technology to support back-to-work strategies is unprecedented in history. Unprecedented and unpredicted: up until March we’d barely thought about shutting down; up until April we’d never considered what it would mean to open back up, and here we are in May with a veritable smorgasbord of
I wonder if you’ve thought about why we are being advised to stay two meters (or six feet) away from other people to avoid Coronavirus transmission? That number used to be half the distance by the way, only changing fairly recently. To understand it, we have to go back to post-World War II England, and to a hospital not terribly far south of Stonehenge. Harvard Hospital was for decades the center
I’m pretty certain when Sting penned those lyrics back in 1980 he wasn’t imagining a manufacturing plant in 2020. Yet, here we are needing to rethink the way we work to ensure adequate social distancing to keep operating safely. Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) that track the interaction of people certainly has a role to play. With a long history of successfully tracking the location and movement of things, we take this stuff pretty seriously.
