The need for increased flexibility and the quest for even higher productivity drives the integration of machines in the factory with IT systems. IT/OT integration means that productivity can be monitored and optimized, product quality can be traced and ultimately customer orders can flow to the factory floor without human intervention. One goal of Industry 4.0 factories should be fully automated and only in case of exception cases such as faults shall humans need to intervene.
Connecting machines to the IT systems, however, in not enough to achieve this integration. Some of the tasks performed today by humans can only be replaced by deploying artificial intelligence.