Now, intelligent manufacturing represented by Industry 4.0 is changing the future form of manufacturing. In this new manufacturing system, data is the soul element and occupies a core position. However, this does not mean that hardware will be marginalized in Industry 4.0. After all, data still needs to be carried out through hardware to present its value in the real world. Therefore, the rise of "data" in intelligent manufacturing will also bring a lot of business opportunities to hardware. Next, from the direction of the "data flow" of Industry 4.0, we can better understand and discover the potential "money prospects" of hardware in each link.

Sensor

In industrial control systems, sensors are the data acquisition end. They are responsible for converting a large number of non-electrical physical and chemical parameters at the industrial site into electrical signals, and then the system interprets the key data information from them as the basis for control decisions. The dependence of intelligent manufacturing on data will inevitably stimulate the demand for sensors. In the future, the industrial market will have an overall upward trend in demand for various sensors such as pressure, displacement, acceleration, angular velocity, temperature, humidity, gas, and photosensitivity.

Another part worth paying attention to is the CMOS image sensor market, which is the core component of machine vision. According to IC Insights, the global industrial CMOS image sensor market will grow from $396 million in 2015 to $912 million in 2020. In addition, the application of multi-view 3D vision in industrial scenarios will make the image data collected by image sensors more abundant and more effective. Image sensors will also become a "piece of cake" in the industrial sensor market that cannot be underestimated.

Interconnection

The data generated by the intelligent manufacturing system needs to be transmitted and shared via a fast and stable network. Germany's "Industry 4.0 R&D White Paper" regards wireless technology as a key project in the research of network communication technology for Industry 4.0. Compared with traditional wired industrial communications, wireless interconnection technology has significant advantages: 1. Low network construction and maintenance costs. According to tests, the installation and maintenance costs of wireless measurement and control systems can be reduced by 90%; 2. Improve the flexibility of production line equipment configuration, and better meet the "flexibility" requirements of the "mass customization" vision of intelligent manufacturing; 3. Adapt to the needs of diverse networking application scenarios, and the deployment needs of various networks such as Mesh and star.

Therefore, whether it is the original wireless protocols in the industrial field - such as WIA-PA, Wireless HART and ISA, or the general wireless protocols - such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, NFC, Bluetooth, 2G/3G/4G network communications, they are affecting and penetrating the industrial field. How to integrate emerging LPWAN wireless communication technologies such as NB-IoT into industrial applications has also been included in the focus of some companies. 5G is also in the scope of Industry 4.0. According to the plan, the design and standards of public 5G network infrastructure will be realized in 2018 to provide wide area network services for industry.

However, industrial applications have more special requirements for wireless communication, especially in terms of reliability and low latency. Therefore, some general wireless technologies will still be used in non-real-time control scenarios such as equipment and product information collection and internal information interaction in the short term. In the future, they will form a composite communication system with real-time industrial control networks to build efficient and reliable pipelines for data.

Wireless interconnection and sensor technology are also moving towards integration, and wireless sensors with wireless data communication functions will also become a new market growth point. Wireless sensor networks can get rid of the constraints of traditional sensor buses, making data aggregation more flexible and cost-effective. On this basis, sensor products can also be superimposed with other technologies such as energy harvesting to form more diversified products and expand the application map.

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