Simplifying smart manufacturing concepts : Commercialization of smart manufacturing concepts to help small and medium-sized enterprises

Sammanfattning: Smart manufacturing is a concept that has taken over the manufacturing sector. The definition of smart manufacturing or the German concept Industry 4.0 has not been clearly stated and the transition from Industry 3.0 to 4.0 is still debated. Large companies have started investing a lot of money to research on concepts like Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), advanced data analytics and cloud computing, that compliment smart manufacturing to fit their manufacturing setup and hence the solutions are not standardized. They have still managed to improve their production systems to make it more flexible, productive, efficient and customer-centric by using the concepts of smart manufacturing. Small and medium-sized enterprises are challenged by problems faced such as low investments, insufficient infrastructure, inefficient production lines and limited time to research on new technology. This thesis studies the concept of Industry 4.0 or smart manufacturing and tries to create a transition from Industry 3.0 concepts to 4.0 concepts by using simple and easy solutions. The main aim of the thesis is to create a business plan to commercialize the simple solutions so that small and medium-sized enterprises could start implementing the smart manufacturing concepts in a simple way. Two concepts namely machine vision system and Bluetooth Low Energy technology were studied, and a product structure was developed. Realworld cases were developed and tested out with the product. Conclusions were made as to how the products and services would benefit the customer and what problems it addresses on a shopfloor setting. A structured business plan to commercialize the product was developed with a customer-centric approach, that helps create a transition from Industry 3.0 to 4.0 concepts as well as provide cost-effective and easy solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. Validation of the concepts were done using concepts like Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices and machine vision systems that provide shop floor data. The limitations of the thesis as well as scope for future work has also been mentioned.