CHAPTER2
Intelligent Manufacturing Technologies
“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.”
—Douglas Adams
The Smart Factory
The term smart factory is old now. Most of the automation projects that I’ve done in the last ten years could be seen as smart factories. Many of the examples mentioned in the final report of the Industry 4.0 working group [1] are that type of smart automation.
At the end of this chapter, I will explain how the production of insulation glass units (IGUs) is automated. But let’s see first how the IGU manufacturer gets his data. The glass manufacturer gets his orders mostly from window manufacturers, who in turn get their orders from architects. The architect can simply export her data ...
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