Quo Vadis, Smart Factory? The Illustrated Need of Intelligent Production Systems

Industry 4.0, IIOT, smart manufacturing, digitalization - various initiatives around the world are driving the emergence of advanced technologies within manufacturing. After the term "Industry 4.0" originally noted first ever back in 2011, today this initiative developed a momentum worth the term "fourth industrial revolution". Since back then, runners on the forefront invested millions of dollars to define the smart factory, while others are still hesitating in the upgrade of the current equipment and not willing to change a running system. But how much of the hype of digitalization is actually applicable to semiconductor manufacturing and is it justified to go down the path while others are reluctant to even start? Where is the middle ground?

During this session, the audience will get a broad introduction around the most common tools utilized in smart manufacturing covering aspects around automation, robotics but also data acquisition and utilization with a view on the maturity on these kind of concepts with actual implementation with recent examples. Last but not least, the audience will receive some food for thought where to begin or re-evaluate their very own digitalization journey by implementing and setting the right metrics in order to measure smart manufacturing and ultimately provide a tangible benefit of the concept to manufacturers, suppliers and eventually to us, the end customers.