Towards Industry 4.0

Abstract

An overview of the work under development within the EU-funded collaborative project MAESTRI is presented in this chapter. The project provides a framework of new Industrial methodology, integrating several tools and methods, to help industries facing the fourth industrial revolution. This concept, called the MAESTRI Total Efficiency Framework (MTEF), aims to advance the sustainability of manufacturing and process industries by providing a management system in the form of a flexible and scalable platform and methodology. The MTEF is based on four pillars: a) an effective management system targeted at continuous process improvement; b) Efficiency assessment tools to support improvements, optimization strategies and decision-making support; c) Industrial Symbiosis paradigm to gain value from waste and energy exchange; d) an Internet-of-Things infrastructure to support easy integration and data exchange among shop-floor, business systems and MAESTRI tools.