What is a connected factory? Its benefits and how it works?

What do you understand by connected factory?

A connected factory allows people, machines, and sensors to share information seamlessly through digital technology. Connectivity in a factory or plant has two main goals. Achieving sustained productivity, self-correction, and quality is the first step. Profitability increases as a result.

Second, it is perhaps less obvious. Another goal of the connected factory is to empower workers. By combining control, visibility, and flexibility, new digital solutions make it possible for manufacturing workers to make more creative, impactful improvements.

How does having a connected factory benefit you?

• Real-time visibility of operational technology across manufacturing facilities leads to better decisions.


• The ability to gain insight into key production metrics enables you to take rapid action in order to reduce waste or prevent certain types of waste from occurring.


• Developing and deploying custom applications by engineers promotes efficiency and scalability across manufacturing by enacting predictive maintenance and solving line-specific problems.


• By improving asset utilization and maximizing asset performance, central monitoring and management can be corrected and improved.


• A clear benchmark for resource usage and identifying inefficiencies can save on the usually high costs associated with operational improvements.


• The ability to detect and prevent quality issues quickly is essential to finding and resolving equipment problems as quickly as possible.


• Smart technology is becoming more affordable. It is now more affordable to include RFID tags and sensors in many products and new products are increasingly integrating smart capabilities.


• Data generated by sensors and devices can be collected and analyzed using technologies such as advanced analytics and the cloud.

How does a connected factory work?

The concept of connecting a smart factory goes beyond automating assembly lines or installing robots on the shop floor. Integrating and empowering shop workers is at the heart of factory connectivity. The manufacturing process can now be linked and scaled in ways that connect sensors, devices, machines, and workers together. Workers can monitor production and supply chains remotely with collaborative digital infrastructure and machine autonomy.

With the invention of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, manufacturing systems are now generating terabytes of data. Managing and interpreting this amount of data is challenging. Manufacturing processes are being updated to include management principles changes, data collection frameworks, analytics frameworks, automation, and robotics in connected factories that incorporate Industry 4.0, IoT, and Big Data.