Getting started with industry 4.0
The High Tech Software Cluster helps manufacturing and production companies to digitize their production processes and create smart products.
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High Tech Software
Cluster
The High Tech Software Cluster is an alliance of over 30 innovative software companies, research organizations and educational institutions that support you in making the digitization of your business affordable and practical.
For many entrepreneurs, digitization - or industry 4.0 - is a vague term that refers to some very interesting concepts, but not clearly related to the immediate needs of their business.
We offer you a range of different opportunities to learn about and get started with digital transformation or the engineering of smart products.
Industry 4.0: what do you want to achieve
with your company?
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Reduce your service and maintenance costs
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Reduce the turnaround time of your production process
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Increase your first pass yield
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Run your business 24/7/365
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Tracking the location of components, parts and products
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Understand how to make your products smart and connected
Showcases
What is Industry 4.0?
Industry 4.0 is about taking the performance of your industrial business to the next level through the application of digitalization technology. Digitalization technology improves the efficiency, effectiveness and agility of your business. Your operations can benefit from amongst other things, shorter throughput time, increased first pass yield and better equipment availability, leading to increased volume and lower costs. Your products can be engineered more sophisticatedly to deliver increased value to customers.
Your business can adapt more quickly and easily to changes in supply or demand. There are a plethora of ways in which digitalization technology can be used to take your business to the next level. Helping you identify what Industry 4.0 can do for your business and supporting your adoption of digitalization technology is the mission of the High Tech Software Cluster.
Data is the life blood of Industry 4.0. The ability to collect data from widely disparate sources and turn that data into valuable information lies at the heart of Industry 4.0. It provides you with the ability to understand your products, processes and markets from hitherto unimaginable perspectives. If information is power, Industry 4.0 enables you to act to strengthen and grow your business based on a depth of knowledge and understanding not available by any other means.
The digitalization technologies that make this possible include the "Internet of Things", which is a means to collect data from a wide variety of sources and store it coherently in one place. "The Cloud" is the place where all the collected data is stored and collated. "Data Analytics" takes stored data and turns it into valuable information. "Artificial Intelligence" (A.I.) goes further by extracting information from data, acting on it and learning from the consequences of its actions to continuously improve the performance of a system.
On the longer term it is A.I. which will have the greatest impact on your business. A.I. has the capability to manage and optimize systems that are far more complicated that the human mind can encompass.
Beyond data, information and intelligence, Industry 4.0 makes use of advanced physical technologies to achieve further efficiency and effectiveness improvements. The combination of powerful computers and state-of-the-art mechatronic systems - so called cyber-physical systems - leads to affordable yet sophisticated levels of automation and smart, highly capable robots. By empowering your workforce with these technologies, you can achieve increases in productivity without increasing your head count, for instance by extending your operations from 40/5 to 24/7.
New technologies such as Additive Manufacturing or Digital Twins can radically change the way that you engineer new products, reducing both engineering and product cost while delivering more value to customers.
Digitalization technology is merely a means to an end and one that you only need to understand conceptually. Your role is to set out the future of your business, to decide how you can take your business to the next level. The High Tech Software Cluster exists to help bridge the gap between the future of your business and the technology upon which that future should be based.
