Читать книгу Industry 4.0 Vision for the Supply of Energy and Materials - Группа авторов - Страница 66

Smart sensors change the way systems collect data. Aside from the aforementioned features, they offer three key benefits to Supply Chain 4.0:

 Operational efficiency: Smart sensors offer valuable added value to the system in real time, which enables the company to analyze and respond without human intervention. This results in operational efficiency through automation, improved demand planning, inventory control, asset management, and product life cycle management.

 Management and visibility: Rapid deployment of various smart sensors in IIoT enhances visibility across systems and assists in E2E supply chain management. This leads to cost reduction and generates incremental revenue. In addition, smart sensors connect end users more closely to the businesses and provide critical insight into customers’ behavior to enhance services. Another primary benefit offered by smart sensors within the Industry 4.0 framework is associated with the increased visibility of workflows and processes. The sensor measurements help real-time monitoring of equipment and assist in proactively receiving advance notices from potential problems or anomalies.

 Self-care and predictive maintenance (PM): Smart sensors could take advantage of artificial intelligence in Industry 4.0 and create self-identification, -diagnosis and -configuration sensors, often collectively identified under the term self-X [206]. In addition to improving the overall performance of the systems, smart sensors allow for quicker response to modifications, repairs, and failures. They are also considered as an essential component in the prospect of predictive maintenance and could identify the service time of machines before they break down. This alleviates the problems of unplanned production outages and reduces maintenance downtime through better monitoring.

Altogether, the connection of smart devices and systems in Industry 4.0 environment organically pertains to every stage of the supply chain. This leads to decreased cost and more efficiencies in the value chain.