SOFTWARIZATION OF THE PRODUCTION: THE INDUSTRY 4.0 APPROACH

Industry 4.0 is a very broad domain that includes: production processes, competitiveness, business decisions, partner and consumer relationships, all centered around cyber-physical systems. This paper aims to introduce main aspects of Industry 4.0 in the relation between physical and digital systems, along with new enabling IT technologies. The paper presents the Industry 4.0 concept and components, and also the IT technologies for implementing a Smart Factory: Industrial Internet-of-Things, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning, Digital Twin and Data Analytics. A Smart Factory model is described and a review of several software tools for its building is performed. The case study was realized with ThingsBoard free software, in order to show the steps in building a Smart Factory model and the potential of such an advanced tool for smart manufacturing.