Industry 4.0 is here, and it’s no secret that your business and product development processes will be affected. The Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), additive manufacturing and other innovative technologies add more dimension and depth to the never-ending amounts of data produced by the industry. How will you effectively manage and use this data to enhance your product development processes? It’s important to know the answer to this question, because Industry 4.0 shows no signs of slowing down. Read more this week on the blog.

In today’s competitive business climate, public relations and marketing have become essential tools for a business to thrive. This is true across the board, whether you are an automotive supplier, technology firm or another key Industry 4.0 stakeholder. Mike Szudarek of Marx Layne & Company joins us on the blog to talk about using analytics in your PR campaigns.

Industrial automation has come a long way since Ford Vice President Delmar Harder coined the term in 1948. Now, as we edge closer to a new decade, industrial manufacturing is benefiting from the collective developments of the past. Industry 4.0 enables machine tending that is collaborative, mobile, and fueled by AI. This week on the blog, Thomas Post, CAPRIOL operations manager, discusses how to build a business case for mobile machine tending in industrial manufacturing.

Automation Alley added 79 new members in September. Click the link below to meet them.

Meet software developer APiS and learn how this Automation Alley member company utilizes their membership to gain exposure and reach a larger audience.

The global race to 5G—the fifth generation of wireless mobile internet connectivity—is critical to our nation’s economic and national security. But how do we get there? This week on the blog, Automation Alley's Noel Nevshehir discusses why we must be first to market and how this ultrafast technology has the potential to greatly impact multiple industries from autonomous vehicles and factory automation to remote health care, smart cities and more.

Is your beer connected? That's right. In an Industry 4.0 world, even the food and beverage industry can reap the benefits of digital technologies. Back in April, Grand Rapids-based tech company DornerWorks joined us on the blog to discuss how cloud-based solutions could improve monitoring to the brewing and distillation processes. This week, they are back to highlight the benefits they believe brewers would see if they could embrace the IoT revolution in fermentation monitoring. Imagine automated QA, reduced manual labor, reduction in human errors, AI-powered algorithms detecting issues long before a human could, making early predictions on completion dates and better, more consistent beer.

We remember learning about “the” Industrial Revolution in school—the evolution from manual-labor to machine-based manufacturing. The larger theme was the transition from an economy that was primarily agrarian to industrialization. Today, the discussion is focused on Industry 4.0, or the fourth Industrial Revolution. Ron Stuver, a business consultant at SICK, Inc., discusses the importance of Industry 4.0 and why you should care.

Pavan Muzumdar, COO of Automation Alley, discusses how James Holzhauer's record-breaking Jeopardy run can be applied to Industry 4.0 and could help businesses navigate through the rapidly changing and sometimes challenging digital landscape.

Automation Alley added 11 new members in August 2019. Click the link below to meet them.