Intel Powering Industry 4.0 for Smart Manufacturing and Data-Centric Transformation

At Hannover Messe, Intel Showcases Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence Technologies Guiding Manufacturers to Realize Industry 4.0 Vision

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Intel Powering Industry 4.0
Christine Boles
Christine Boles is vice president in the Internet of Things Group and general manager of the Industrial Solutions Division at Intel Corporation.

By Christine Boles

We are well along the journey to Industry 4.0 – where analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) drive intelligence, decision-making and productivity. The transformative opportunities and market potential of Industry 4.0 are massive: It’s expected to create up to $3.7 trillion in value within global manufacturing. We are still in the early adoption stages, with only 30 percent of companies actively deploying IoT solutions at scale.

With the emergence of the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and AI, a new kind of cloud-connected, data-driven factory is emerging. It is not just a “smart factory,” marked by greater machine automation. It is an “intelligent factory,” defined by hyper-agility and autonomous production, where data is transforming business.

Intel has a rich legacy of working with industrial manufacturers to help achieve workload consolidation and overcome burgeoning network traffic growth. Intel architecture is powering the transformation of people, processes, technologies and organizations to make Industry 4.0 a reality. We see every worker, tool, machine and widget on a factory floor providing data to improve operations. We’re excited by the potential of unleashing this data and transforming it into real-time insights to reduce downtime, increase output and invigorate revenue streams.

At Hannover Messe, Intel is demonstrating edge computing and AI technologies that help leading manufacturers realize the vision of Industry 4.0. Intel, along with existing and a rising new ecosystem of players, including ABB Electrification, Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Capgemini, Dell Technologies, GE Additive, GE Digital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tridium, Microsoft and Siemens, are driving the industrial sector forward. Businesses utilizing technology with ultra-low latency connectivity over Intel technology-powered 5G and edge networks will be able to unlock operational efficiencies and safety improvements in tandem with machine-to-machine (M2M) automation, vision and AI insights.

Workload Consolidation

This year, Intel is showing off the next-generation of software-defined industrial systems (SDIS) to provide flexibility and scalability to the factory by bringing general-purpose computing to manufacturing with software failover, interoperability, manageability, security and high availability. Powered by Intel Xeon processors, Intel and Microsoft bring together several pieces of technology into a single hardware, software and Azure services bundle to enable industrial PC (IPC) manufacturers to create fully provisioned and customized industrial PCs out of the box. More news about the modern IPC and integration with ONNX and the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit will come later this year.

Machine Vision

To accelerate intelligent vision solutions, Intel architecture-based platforms power cameras and other edge appliances used in video monitoring and machine vision to perform a variety of different tasks, such as image signal processing (ISP), video transport, format conversion, compression and edge analytics. At HMI, we will showcase the Hikvision Smart Camera based on the Intel Movidius Vision Processing Unit (VPU), a market-ready solution for machine vision. The Intel Movidius VPU provides a cost-efficient and high-performance solution for on-device AI-based image processing. It’s helping companies in energy, industrial manufacturing and transportation use visual data to better understand their businesses. Intel Vision Products accelerate vision from the edge to the cloud, providing the right performance, cost and power efficiency where it’s needed.

Edge Computing and AI

Intel is bringing the power of the cloud to the network and edge devices by helping people and things do more with access to data-driven experiences. In the Intel booth, Capgemini will be demonstrating an autonomous product manufacturing process with a visual inspection of components in a conveyer belt. This market-ready solution is integrating conveyor systems, robots, cameras and IoT for near real-time visualization and predictive maintenance.

Connect at the Intel Booth

Industry 4.0 will provide great potential for manufacturers, but the data deluge to come will be daunting. To survive, the industry must prepare now.

See how Intel is powering a data-centric Industry 4.0 by visiting the Intel booth at Hannover Messe (Hall 6, Stand D46) in Hannover, Germany, on April 1-5, 2019. For more information, check out our industrial automation web page. I look forward to seeing you in Hannover.

Christine Boles is vice president in the Internet of Things Group and general manager of the Industrial Solutions Division at Intel Corporation.