The first post about Industry 4.0 indicated the need for key technologies that would make possible the 4th industrial revolution. These key tehcnologies have been called "digital enablers". Each industrial revolution has had its "enablers". The first one was made...

In the 20th Century 80’s decade there was reborn interest in neural networks, both in academia and industry. A neural network is an algorithm that mimics the neural connections present in the neocortex. The interest was motivated by the rediscovering of algorithms to...

In July 2015 we were surprised by the news that a robot kills factory worker after picking him up and crushing him against a metal plate at Volkswagen plant in Baunatal (Germany). They insisted the death was a result of human error and not any malfunction on the part...

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that is little by little is making way in our daily lives. In broad terms, it consists in embedding digital information to the reality we have before our eyes through real-time superposition of this information about the image...

Agriculture is a so old human activity that popular wisdom is full of proverbs and sayings giving recommendations about the best way to precede in farm duties. Popular wisdom along with the knowledge transmitted from parents to children has determined agriculture...

If you are hesitating about which technology would best fit your needs and liking, you should carefully analyze pros and cons and compare what you can get from both. A good starting point may be the type of driving you intend to do. If you plan to spend a lot of time...

Spanish SOHOs and SMEs have faced in recent years to a very complex macroeconomic environment. Indeed, it might be more precise saying that they are still facing this situation. The fall in the domestic consumption, along with financial constraints, has caused a...

Beyond painting your factory or your products in green color In our previous post, we mentioned two corporate sustainability initiatives (one from IKEA and another from Google). It is true that these two companies are somehow unique cases, without easy extrapolation...

The biggest obstacles are not the technology barriers but the psychological and organizational barriers. In the previous post, we explained the three steps (Reduce, Recover and Replace) through which a factory can reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases associated...

There is a growing concern caused by the possible effects Artificial Intelligence (AI) could have on everyday working life. Recently in the Davos Forum they have dealt with this issue, but two years ago The Economist published an article about the potential job lost...

Robotics, mainly service robotics, has long been the subject of science fiction, with protocol droids designed to serve human beings like C-3PO from “Star Wars”, military robots like Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit”, robot cleaners like Wall-E, or maids like Rosie from...

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution Fourth, some predict a dark future for the worker in a factory where robots and smart manufacturing machines will replace a man who will be limited to just supervise the operation of the factory of the future. At present...

The estimation of a successful manufacturing realization is often linked to the project criteria quality, time and costs. Often it’s not possible to find optimum solutions for all criteria. For example, an exceeding quality leads to higher costs as normal. Thus, a...

The activity in R&D is very diverse. The results are visible every day, although they need important periods of time in order to bear fruit. Success in this field is the result of a constant effort. Clearly, the maturing period is higher than political mandates,...

Three steps to reduce waste, emissions and the use of resources “Green Manufacturing” can be defined in many ways, but in this post and the following ones, we will focus on the “greening” of manufacturing, this is, reducing pollution and waste by minimizing the use of...

Some weeks ago different media reported about the opinion declared by Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates about the apocalyptic future artificial intelligence might bring us, in which Humanity could be dominated by the machine. Before that terrible day arrives,...

Firstly, it is necessary to insist on the fact that, talking about scientific and technical progress is to do about economic and social progress. This is like this since homo sapiens appeared on Earth. But it is absolutely obvious since the late Middle Age, when...

Trying to define the ultimate trend is like trying to choose the perfect camera; once you have purchased the brand new toy, your brother-in-law shows up with the double of megapixels. This time we are talking about Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial...