Industry 4.0 is all about improving manufacturing capability and efficiency by shortening downtimes, improving quality, optimizing processes, and other measures. Most of these advances are made possible by monitoring data gathered from the manufacturing floor via sensors, robotics, and embedded software.
Machines and robotics on the production floor are an enormous expense for any manufacturer and are very often financed over several years. Any unscheduled downtime cuts deeply into not only profits, but the very viability of the business. An overheating equipment room or a server dying an early death can be very damaging, particularly when replacement hardware has long lead-times.
Data Holdings has hands-on experience with IoT, CI/CD infrastructure tools, network security, and software creation. This first-hand experience, layered on top of our owned and operated physical data center infrastructure, gives us a unique window into how a manufacturer can capture their data to realize their Industry 4.0 dreams.
Our facilities strictly abide by ASHRAE standards for temperature and air quality, meaning servers at Data Holdings can last up to three times as long as one in a factory closet.
There’s also lots of talk about “Edge” data centers, and how Industry 4.0 needs more, small edge data centers close to manufacturing centers. To be effective, an Edge facility must be located within a ten-millisecond round-trip range of the data’s origination point. Over a reputable fiber-optic network, ten milliseconds equate to around 200 miles. Data Holdings data center in Milwaukee is perfectly capable of serving the majority of Wisconsin, and most manufacturers outside of that range are with a 10-millisecond range of Data Holdings’ Minneapolis facility.
Cameras, laser-based measuring equipment and specialized IoT sensors help ensure the quality of the manufacturing process, and any IT hardware associated with that process must be held in a specialized environment within a finite distance of the factory.
Data Holdings and other commercial data centers can play a vital role in the successful adoption of Industry 4.0.
