International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

The article is dedicated to studying and comparing the indicators used to evaluate the educational activities quality of universities from various countries. In particular, the indicators of tuition fees, and expenses for the separate indices of inputs for educational activities are being investigated. The ratio of universities tuition fees to incomes of the educational services consumers is being simulated.

The Industry 4.0 initiative imposes new requirements on cyber-physical systems in terms of interoperability, response time, communication capabilities, and more. A major approach to addressing these requirements is through the development and use of standard reference frameworks, architectures and models as well as the widespread and joint application of open industry standards. The aim of the article is to analyze the use of standards under the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well as to present and analyze some of the most applied standards in the field of monitoring and control of cyber-physical systems, such as AutomationML, OPC-UA, IEC-61449, IEC-61512. The reference architecture RAMI 4.0 was used to establish relationships and interactions between them.

Prevention 4.0 as part of the enterprise’s safety culture is developing HSE management system to address new challenges in prevention. Industry 4.0 anticipates new linkages between technology, man, and management systems to apply the most efficient IT systems to ensure the flexibility of the production process so that its output is a product that takes into consideration customer requirements. These changes include the existence of new types of risk due to the change of the position of man from the classical production centers to the area of superstructure activities, programmer, setter, maintainer, security technician for the digitization of production processes. Risk identification is based on defining the hazards and threats of a complex manufacturing system in the context of Safety and Security – Sa&Se, their formulation so that characteristic parameters can be efficiently digitized within the manufacturing process.

The manufacturing industry is facing high competitiveness from rivals and high demands from customers. Industry 4.0, as a new manufacturing paradigm, also imposes its demands. The main driver of Industry 4.0 is the development of new innovative technologies including information and communication technologies whose rapid development has given impetus to the development of automated data acquisition systems. The RFID technology is one of the key technologies for intelligent manufacturing that encompasses advanced information and manufacturing technologies. Although the RFID technology is used in Croatia (mostly for identifying persons, access control, payment control, etc.), there is no wider use of the RFID technology in the industry where the main problem of low competitiveness is caused by low levels of innovative capabilities and obsolete technological equipment. The EU strategic documents (e.g. Europe 2020, Digitising European Industry initiative) encourage the digital transformation of industry (with an emphasis on investment in technology and innovation). One of the goals of the Industrial Strategy of the Republic of Croatia 2014-2020 is to increase productivity. To achieve this goal and improve competitiveness it is necessary to increase the use of the RFID technology in industry as the basis for digital transformation.
The goal of this paper is twofold: to present bibliometric literature review on the RFID technology, and to present advantages of the RFID technology in the context of intelligent manufacturing with reference to the case of Croatian economy.

Speaking about Industry 4.0 we can’t help mentioning the role of optical sensors in building automation, especially in smart factories and automation of SCADA system. Building smart factories in concept of Industry 4.0 requires intelligent sensors and seems relevant. The paper considers management system of distributed factory and information security of it if there are used optical sensors.

Digital transformation, new business models development and business processes automation ranks among the key business concerns and company priorities. In this context, smart services propose new models for service automation, combining data, analytical components and physical infrastructure in unique customer offerings. The present research aims to present the smart services potential, exploring its characteristics, perspectives and fields of application. First, the paper makes an overview of smart services features and concepts, then, it determines smart services perspectives and last, it presents use cases and industry sectors for smart services implementation.

The Industry 4.0 initiative poses great challenges to the world, countries and companies connected with the provided digital transformation and the new intelligent technologies in all areas of the industry. This requires the development and follow-up of a national strategy for the adoption and implementation of Industry 4.0. It is important in this case to assess the Industry 4.0 readiness of each country for transformation and change. The main aim of the paper is to present, analyse and compare some of the most promised existing approaches for calculation of Industry 4.0 readiness at national level. Some results are presented and compared.

Monitoring and control of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) have many challenges related to the heterogeneous environment, the high degree of interaction between the components and the high requirements for functionality and scale. The paper presents an analysis of the state of the art in this area and proposes an approach for monitoring and control of CPS through the integration of the IEC-61499 based models for distributed control systems and the IEC-61512 standard providing domain specific models for design and control of batch production processes as well as the Signal- Interpreted Petri Nets used for the purpose of formal specification and verification of unit procedures. The approach is illustrated with an example of CPS for loading a batch tank and mixing of liquid flow.

The paper deals with implementation of artificial intelligence method for diagnostics of technological machines. The deep learning as a method of AI seems to be a very good candidate for solving complex problem of technical diagnostics. The method is now implemented for diagnostics for concrete production enterprise.

Web services are application components that can be linked together for creating new functionality. As such, they support industry environments by binding together inhabitant services with distributed on demand services for implementing the business strategies. However, web services are operating in dynamic environments and an important issue during the composition process is change management either at the local or at the web, in general. Therefore, service changes together with other nondeterministic behaviours must be efficiently propagated to ensure the validity and consistency of the enterprise plans. Simulations are effective tools for enhancing factory competitiveness. Simulating the operation of a developed composite service for verifying the developed product could be a solution to this problem. The results of the simulation will allow to predict and react to such behaviours before applying the developed service in real production. As such, this paper describes and compares the existing service simulators that could be used in smart industry environments in terms of their functionality. Based on this review, the identification of gaps in performing simulation of service composition in industrial environments is presented, and challenges to be met on the field are outlined.

Due to intentions of Ukrainian economy to join European Union there are many threats and opportunities on the way. Ukraine has a number of industries producing goods, products and services needed in Europe. The growth of economic ties with EU makes Ukrainian manufactures stronger and has become a question of key importance during last decade. Meantime, Ukraine remains within rather tense conditions of technological lag but with some promising abilities in agriculture and food industries supplemented with a great potential in area of information technologies. This distinctive combination of abilities make it feasible for Ukraine both to become a strong partner for EU and to do a great leap of industrial progress within “Industry 4.0” concept. Nevertheless, one of crucial problems for Ukraine is to build an innovative infrastructure to meet requirements of intellectual transport system conforming to EU “Industry 4.0”. This research paper is focused on discussion of these new features of transport industry and opportunities for Ukraine to make its transport industry a leading advantage for the whole economy. Those drastic changes in Ukrainian transport would procure an excellence for other industries implementing “Industry 4.0”, the same as to become a test ground and an exclusive source of experience for EU on “Industry 4.0” implementation.

Today Industrial Enterprises are facing the challenge of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Steam Power, Henry Ford’s Assembly Line, and Proliferation of Coal-based energy etc. – each of these developments in the evolution of manufacturing fundamentally changed the way products were manufactured and the way manufacturers moved products from factory to the customers. The present paper discusses the term “Industry 4.0” and its main characteristics, as well. Furthermore, a theoretical framework for evaluation the key technologies and concepts with respect to their impact on the production engineering and management. Also this paper discusses and some given arguments why manufacturers need to make changes in their traditional view of the functioning of the production system in term of “Industry 4.0”.