Three trends predicted for 2023 that will affect Industry 4.0

Every year, and in a faster and more efficient way, Industry 4.0 begins to benefit from the application of innovations that are implemented in the most advanced places but that later, once their effectiveness has been verified, in a capillary way, they soak up the entire system . The next three are going to be decisive this 2023 thanks to the fact that the conditions are already in place for them to become a reality.

The next supply chain transformation

In 2023, the adoption of technologies such as machine vision and deep learning will bring new opportunities for supply chains. There is a new era of intelligent logistics and a global supply chain just around the corner, in which driverless fleets, autonomous warehouse management and simulation will be some of the most striking aspects.

In recent times, the fragility of the global supply chain has been one of the most worrying issues on a day-to-day basis. Delivery delays, unavailable products and empty shelves have been a constant for quite a few periods. But it is also true that the efforts of the industry to refine the optimization of processes have allowed situations that were expected to be dramatic on occasions to be saved. As a result of the investments that have been made in the various improvements, the global situation is close to moving away from those moments of tension that have been experienced.

The first place where you will begin to see further progress is in the manufacture of the products themselves. IoT sensors in factories will multiply and machine learning will be used not only to predict errors in machines, but also to prevent them. Less downtime means consistent production.

In addition, given the problems of recent years, being able to send products to any part of the world is a challenge that requires different approaches. Cloud-powered digital freight networks will span countries and even oceans, providing real-time data that will enable shippers to optimize the most efficient shipping routes and change course in response to unavoidable events, such as equipment issues or weather conditions. severe. It will be possible to have real-time information on the current status and arrival time of the goods, but at all levels of the supply chain.

These cargo networks will pave the way for the first autonomous truck shipments in countries like the United States, which will spread to other territories. Through the use of spatial computing, edge computing, and simulation, autonomous trucks are expected to have a major impact on the global supply chain. The reason is simple. A human driver can only spend a certain amount of time behind the wheel before becoming distracted or tired. In contrast, an autonomous truck can stay on the road for 24 hours. Products will get where they need to go faster, safer and more efficiently.

Arriving at a local warehouse, robotic order picking and sorting and automated packaging will become more commonplace. We will continue to see an evolution with new innovations in robotics that use artificial intelligence, computer vision, and precision handling of individual products in a company’s inventory. In addition, autonomous robotics will also begin to play a larger role in storage.

The key to supply chain transformation is using technology to optimize each step of a product’s journey. Starting in 2023, we will see an acceleration in the development of smart factories, smart equipment, and smart shipping that do just that. Each of these elements will play a role in improving worker safety, optimizing inventory management, reducing maintenance costs and streamlining production processes. The supply chain of the future is digital.

A wave of smart energy innovation

Surface materials that store energy, decentralized networks, smart consumption technologies… In 2023, we will see a rapid development on a global scale that will improve the way in which energy is produced, stored and consumed.

In the midst of an energy crisis, rising costs and unreliable access to energy are global issues that affect everyone. It is not the first time that we have faced an energy crisis, but several mature technologies are beginning to converge and together they will allow their impact to be less than in the past.

The environment around us produces enough renewable energy. The challenge is really in storage and delivery on demand to the systems that need to consume that energy. The companies around the world are also rapidly innovating in this area. The cloud allows materials research to offer new use cases, such as the integration of energy storage into the structure of the objects they intend to power. There are already ships whose walls are the batteries that feed them during their journey. In addition, advances in long-term storage are also beginning to be seen, such as molten salts, stacked block systems, and fuel cells.

Another area is the decentralization of energy. Given the uncertainty about the availability of energy, microgrids are also being used, which can collect solar energy, for example, and distribute it among the participants. As energy challenges continue to be amplified by geopolitical events and climate fluctuations, microgrids will become a viable solution for many communities around the world, and cloud technologies will play a role in this evolution. Data from solar panels, wind farms, geothermal and hydropower will be transmitted, stored, monitored, enriched and analyzed in the cloud. Deep learning will be used to analyze all power data to predict usage spikes and avoid outages by redistributing power.

We’ll also see Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart consumer devices start to really take off around the world next year. This will lead to the next wave of innovations that will stem from the new observation capabilities that these devices bring to the industry.

The generalization of custom silicon

The use of custom-designed chips will increase rapidly in 2023. As a result, the pace of innovation will accelerate as workloads take advantage of hardware optimizations that maximize performance while reducing power consumption and costs. costs.

Custom silicon and specialized hardware have quickly gained ground in the consumer technology industry. Whether in laptops or mobiles, the manufacturing and adoption of custom silicon has led to significant performance improvements. While adoption has been rapid in the consumer space, the same has not been true for commercial and industrial applications and systems, where computer software and hardware traditionally have longer replacement cycles. However, this situation will change rapidly in the coming times as the accessibility and adoption of custom silicon takes hold.

Companies like Amazon Web Services and Google have been investing in the development of custom silicon for some time, discovering, for example, that workloads that companies run in the cloud can run better and more cost-effectively on custom silicon, designed specifically for them. specific use cases.

The cost savings and performance benefits will lead to more experimentation, innovation, adoption, and ultimately more custom silicon for various specific workloads. So, in 2023, the software industry will really start to take advantage of all that custom silicon has to offer.