Advancing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Manufacturing: Framework for IoT-Based Data Collection in Industry 4.0 Concept

Abstract

Currently, industrial engineers are witnessing a rapid development of innovation in modern industry and the integration of critical elements of Industry 4.0 into production processes in order to remain competitive. Such changes are characterized by a large amount of effort and financial resources. To successfully deploy these changes requires not only the purchase of hardware and software but also the training of employees and the modification of the company’s organizational structure. The main objective of the article is to propose a framework for the modernization of SMEs to a level close to the Smart Factory by using the necessary attributes of Industry 4.0. The framework design is based on the initial state of a standard SME and consists of the design of fitting new IoT devices for efficient data collection, the design of a data warehouse for storing process data using Hadoop, and the integration of process- and operational-level data into the prepared data warehouse. The resulting design is developed in the form of a methodology and is generalized for use in manufacturing enterprises. The universal design is independent of the initial state of the enterprise.