Smart Manufacturing

The ability to connect a growing range of technologies, such as sensors, Internet of (Industrial) Things, cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, mobile devices and Augmented/Virtual Reality, is helping to take manufacturing to new levels of ‘smartness’. Such technologies have the opportunity to transform, automate and bring intelligence to manufacturing processes and support the next manufacturing era. In this chapter, we describe the manufacturing context, emerging concepts, such as Industry 4.0, and technologies that are driving change and innovation within the manufacturing industry.