Critical Infrastructure For Industry 4 Laboratories And Learning Factories In Academia

Industry 4 laboratories, Learning Factories and Testlabs are vital facilities for the development and dissemination of the new industrial revolution. However, as they are implemented and reported in the literature at present, they are lacking the specific constituents and their combination and integration that would qualify them as revolutionary - i.e. being clearly distinctive from carefully implemented state of the art technology that has been the norm in the last decades. An essential attribute of Industry 4 systems, as presented in the literature, is the capacity for collection, processing and recording of critical data that describe and characterizes their state and the use of information extracted from the data to monitor, control and optimize the operations. Industry 4 laboratories need to provide real life context for teaching, research, business and industry purposes. This paper discusses the minimal required infrastructure for establishing relevant Industry 4 laboratories.