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Industry 4.0 & IOT – The Future and the Past Meet
Indústria 4.0 & IOT – O Futuro e o Passado se encontram
All about IOT, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, 5G, Drones and Robots.
Mauro Shirasuna

Welcome! This is the first post of this Blog and here we will talk a little bit about everything: IOT, Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, 5G, Drones, robots, etc. We will try to demystify what these new technologies are and how they can impact our lives, through simple, direct texts and with some dose of good humor. We will try to avoid, as much as possible, very technical texts allowing lay people in the area to follow our Blog. YouTube channel? Um… not yet, but it's a good idea!

Currently, what is most impressive is not the emergence of new technologies, but the speed with which they emerge! We can barely stop to understand the meaning of one of them and, soon after, make the announcement of another revolutionary technology! An example is 4G technology, which was implemented in 2012 (less than 10 years), and we are already on the eve of 5G, which is 100 times faster. Today, it is like that: technology with more than 10 years is already old and outdated!

This dizzying speed generates anxiety in all of us, because we are unable to keep up with its evolution. If we can't even read the manual for our cell phone, imagine talking about Artificial Intelligence! But the main reason for this anxiety is a somewhat complicated word to pronounce: employability! In other words, do we need to master all this to keep us employed? Um… let's leave this discussion for later.

Now, let's explain the title of the Blog. While we will talk about the future, we will also talk about the past, through our experiences in 30 years of career. “Looking at the rearview mirror” is that we will understand a lot that is ahead of us.

The Future: “Industry 4.0”

And to start, let's make an introduction to “Industry 4.0”. In the next posts we will continue talking about this subject. If there is a term that is “in fashion”, it is definitely “Industry 4.0”. Try using this term at a meeting at your company or with a customer. Cite the few concepts that you will learn by reading this post and I guarantee that you will be successful! In other words, it is a concept that is much talked about, but little understood.

But, back to the subject, when did this term come up and why? The “Hannover Messe” is the largest industrial technology fair, held annually in Germany. In 2011, during a press conference, three German engineers, Henning Kagermann (one of the founders of SAP), Wolfgang Wahlster (professor of Artificial Intelligence) and Wolf Dieter Lukas (representative of the German government) gave an interview. When asked how they could describe the current moment in the industry, they stated that Humanity was at the beginning of the "Fourth Industrial Revolution".

You may be asking yourself, "If this is the fourth revolution, when were the others?" In a well summarized form, the “First Industrial Revolution” took place in the 18th century with the invention of the Steam Engine, that is, it was the beginning of mechanization. The “Second Industrial Revolution” took place between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century with the beginning of electrification and the large-scale production of industries. And finally, with the “Third Industrial Revolution”, the digital age arose with the beginning of the use of electronic computers, between the 60s and 70s. Yes, computers already existed at that time, but they were huge, expensive and with inferior processing power. to a cell phone that you can buy today at the street vendor on the corner.

But going back to the “Hannover Messe” of 2011, during that interview a very simple term was launched, to synthesize the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” and to the taste of “marketers”:Industry 4.0”. You may be intrigued by why “Industry, four, Score, zero”. In fact, the words “dot” and “zero” would be unnecessary and no one knows why! It could just be "Industry 4" or "Fourth Revolution". But it was probably a beautiful marketing move to create this term! And it worked, why did you get it! Who knows, in a little while, some company will launch the term “Industry 4.1” with automatic transmission…

After 2011, the subject was a little forgotten until, in 2016, at the “World Economic Forum”, an annual event that takes place in Davos, Switzerland, bringing together the main rulers, entrepreneurs, leaders and activists in the world, the “Fourth Revolution Industrial ”was one of the main themes of the event. As the event brings a lot of visibility to the world press, the term “Industry 4.0” definitely won social networks and the world…

The “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, or “Industry 4.0” is a broad and open concept, but in general, it tries to describe the impact on the industry and, why not, in our own lives, of a series of new technologies like IOT, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, 5G, Robotics, Augmented Reality, 3D Printing, Nanotechnology, Drones and… .ufa! I could list even more things. In the next post, we will continue this subject.

The Past: “Industry 3.0”

I studied Engineering and when I left the University, where I was used to that quiet academic life, I got a job at an Industrial Automation company. Shortly after a month of work, my boss put me on the CSN (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional) project team, which was a huge project that had been going on for a year. It was the project for the Automation Reform of the Blast Furnace 3 of the Volta Redonda plant.

A little bit of the picture of what we could call “Industry 3.0”. At the end of the 80's, the CLP (Programmable Logic Controller) which, until today, is used for the automation of industrial processes. However, microcomputers were still rare in companies and we would do the programming with pencil and paper and then type the program into a microcomputer that we had to share with other engineers. Warning to navigators: at that time there was no cell phone and the Internet was just beginning!

So, if we didn't have computers, cell phones and the Internet, what was good about that time? Answer: we had more TIME! Even due to the lack of agile communication, everything happened more slowly. A project the size of CSN, could take 2 to 3 years, quietly! Today, at most, one year! This is the most precious commodity, which we do not have today. At that time, I was very lucky and had enough time to learn various techniques, concepts and “tricks” from the older engineers during the project.

That was what “Industry 3.0” was like: there were few innovative technologies that were evolving at a still slow speed, allowing their learning and absorption.

To conclude the report of the project, I still remember my first trip to CSN. I drove alone to Volta Redonda and arrived at night. The first image I had was of the plant operating at night: it was huge, lots of lights, smoke, people passing by and the huge Blast Furnaces dominating the landscape. Being very sincere, “I was scared to death”, to say the least… It was a lot of responsibility for a recent graduate.

Fortunately, the most experienced engineers arrived the other week and we started preparations for starting automation systems. I stayed in Volta Redonda for about two months and went back to the office in São Paulo while the other engineers stayed at the plant. After a few months, he left this company to work for another company. Unfortunately, I later learned of a serious accident. In May 1989, there was an explosion of the CSN Blast Furnace 3 Regenerator, whose automation was the responsibility of another company and not the company where I worked. The blast projected refractory bricks more than a kilometer away, causing two fatalities and a loss of US$ 10 million for CSN. A former colleague was still working at the site and was badly burned. Fortunately, he recovered after being hospitalized for some time. As soon as I could, I went to visit him at the hospital.

It is just like that, in the area of Industrial Automation. One day, you can automate a machine to package chocolate, and another day, automate a Blast Furnace! In the case of the machine, you can lose a lot of chocolate. At Alto Forno, well ... then things are different!

Even so, our profession is passionate! Until the next Blog!

Mauro Shinasuna
Product Manager
He is an Electrical Engineer graduated from Escola Politécnica da USP and with Specialization in Industrial Administration from Fundação Vanzolini da USP. He has over 30 years of experience in the Industrial Automation sector having worked at different companies such as Nestlé, Heineken, Rockwell Automation. He is currently Product Manager at Delta Electronics Brazil.
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