When John Wilkinson erected a new arms factory in the Midlands in 1776, the English industrial magnate put his faith in the latest technology of the day. He commissioned Boulton & Watt to build a steam engine the likes of which had never been seen before. It could run two furnaces at the same time – without any workers at all.
This “Topsy-Turvy engine” was considered a masterpiece of engineering and marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. 250 years later, hardly anything in business still revolves around steam, but everything does revolve around data. By making use of this data, the German enclosure manufacturer Rittal is working on another revolution: Industry 4.0.
The idea is that everything will be interconnected, machines will talk to machines, and systems will set themselves up and control themselves. Computers and software will make fully automated processes possible.
Where factories with their tall chimneys once resembled gigantic steam engines, they will in future look more like gigantic computers – control, storage and processing units, as well as data input and output. The idea originated in America, the first concept came from Germany. Three researchers presented it almost exactly ten years ago. Since then, an army of engineers has been turning words into deeds.
Today, one of the world’s most modern factories is located in Haiger, in the German state of Hesse. Each of its two floors is a hall the size of a football pitch, with high ceilings and sparkling clean floors. It is a factory straight out of science fiction. Here, robots already outnumber people. They punch and bend huge sheets of metal, make hair-thin welds, screw on flange plates and fit gaskets, drill the tiniest holes and deburr their edges. At the packing station, the gripper arms of three robots taller than a man fold large cardboard boxes in perfect synchronisation.
Numbered pallet carriers transport metal parts weighing tonnes through the hall without a driver. There is precision to the millimetre at every turn – working to the rhythm of bits and bytes. The only place where a human being can be seen is in the paint shop. Dressed in protective clothing, a big helmet and thick gloves, he looks like he is about to go into space. He sprays the large metal boxes and then pushes them further into the drying plant, putting the finishing touches in this Smart Factory.
Data instead of steam
But not everything in the factory is automated yet, says Markus Asch, head of Rittal International. In the production of enclosures, there are fully and semi-automated lines, as well as man-and-machine and machine-to-machine interaction. “We are not yet where we want to be. But we are on the right track.” And that track is paved, first and foremost, with digital data.
Data collected by millions of machine sensors, processed by tiny computers and stored in tiny memories, travelling at the speed of light through optical cables as thick as an arm, producing images on monitors and controlling half a factory. According to Asch, 18 terabytes of data are generated here every day. That is about enough to fill twenty thousand filing cabinets. The only difference is that instead of being printed out, sorted and filed, data is stored and analysed digitally.
For this purpose, there is a small computer centre located in one of the halls. It is the brain of the factory and is housed in a walk-in but locked container. This is where all the cables and wires come together; where one thing leads to another; where the diodes of network computers the size of refrigerators are flashing around the clock; where the data collected is analysed and processed into information to be sent back to the machines. A highly sensitive area. No trespassing. But you can have a look through a small glass window in the wall of the container.
Asch talks about cybersecurity and edge computing, the computer cloud, virtual images and digital twins, open source, smart components and automated engineering. The Rittal factory is a so-called greenfield project: no old buildings, no old structures, no old technology and, above all, no depreciation on old machinery. A brand-new building for a new way of working.
It was built and equipped in a matter of months eight years ago, on a greenfield site on the outskirts of the city and right next to the motorway. The cost was in the hundreds of millions. Engineers from all disciplines equipped the factory and got it up and running. Specialists in automation and IT, in production and work processes, in robotics, laser and computer technology. The competition has its eye on the factory, and for the scientific community it is high on the agenda. After all, the people in Haiger work on more than just control enclosures.
For a long time, however, Rittal was regarded as what used to be called a sheet metal bender. But years ago, the company became specialised in the manufacture and equipping of enclosures – those letterbox-sized or even man-sized metal boxes that can be found in almost every building in the world. From factories to office towers – nothing works without an enclosure. Inside, hundreds and thousands of cables converge, bringing order to the threatening chaos of tangled cables. And that order creates safety.
A wealth of experience
In the past, Rittal was one of Germany’s medium-sized companies; today, with a turnover in the billions and with thousands of employees, the company is an integral part of a billion-euro corporation, one of the mainstays of the broad-based Friedhelm Loh Group. Then as now, Rittal is regarded as a hidden champion, the number one in a lucrative niche market, an industry leader from the German state of Hesse.
But the man of the house also says that Industry 4.0 is still a long way off. Asch says that it will probably take some time before data can completely control processes, before digital codes can optimise production as if by magic – not decades, but years. A third of the way has been covered, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. No one can say for sure. For now, it is a matter of learning by doing. “We now know where and how we have to start.”
The global industry is currently goggling at manufacturing sites like the one in Haiger, Hesse, It is here where they are working on the future, not just on products. And just as Boulton & Watt’s Wilkinson steam engine sparked the first industrial revolution two and a half centuries ago, the Rittal factory is also at the start of something new, and perhaps of something really big.