Improving UK Productivity and Industry 4.0

At a glance:

This 44 page guide aims to assist all sectors of the furniture industry to better understand the potential for Industry 4.0 to improve their productivity.

Highlights:

Sections within the guide include:

• UK Productivity Conundrum, including reasons for weak productivity, manufacturing Sector Productivity and factors affecting productivity performance
• Industry 4.0, industrial revolutions, industry 4.0 origins, industry 4.0 building blocks, industry 4.0 production system and stepping stones to Industry 4.0
• Useful technologies / concepts to consider in the smart factory including cloud solutions, capital equipment with networked control systems, multi-purpose production lines, capital equipment with embedded data analysis and sensors, rapid additive manufacturing/ 3D printing, universal data integration networks, fully autonomous robots, 3D simulation of manufacturing processes and predictive maintenance
• ‘Smart’ furniture factory of the future, including vertical networking - optimisation of back office and supply chain processes and horizontal networking - optimisation of production processes