Improving UK Productivity and Industry 4.0

This 44 page guide aims to assist all sectors of the furniture industry to better understand the potential for Industry 4.0 to improve their productivity.

Sections within the guide include:
- UK Productivity Conundrum, including reasons for weak productivity, manufacturing Sector Productivity and factors affecting productivity performance
- Industry 4.0, industrial revolutions, industry 4.0 origins, industry 4.0 building blocks, industry 4.0 production system and stepping stones to Industry 4.0
- Useful technologies / concepts to consider in the smart factory including cloud solutions, capital equipment with networked control systems, multi-purpose production lines, capital equipment with embedded data analysis and sensors, rapid additive manufacturing/ 3D printing, universal data integration networks, fully autonomous robots, 3D simulation of manufacturing processes and predictive maintenance
- 'Smart' furniture factory of the future, including vertical networking - optimisation of back office and supply chain processes and horizontal networking - optimisation of production processes