Industry 4.0

Just as the industrial revolution called for businesses to adapt to electricity enabling mass production, today’s businesses have to embrace the uptake of smart technologies and data.

Why? Because the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0 is here!

Industry 4.0 is characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and cyber-physical. It’s a change in the way we do business that calls for the heavy engineering industry to embrace new technologies into their business models for productivity gain.

The problem is, this is easier said than done.

Knowing when and how to incorporate these new technologies into your business model can be difficult, and of course requires a financial commitment that is not often achievable for businesses with no innovation strategies in play.

At HERA we understand this. We also understand that to create the adoption of Industry 4.0, it is not so much about focusing on the underlying technologies (although this is very important), but more so, helping our industry understand and seek the improvements and changes this technology has the potential to bring to them.

We do this by:

helping our members to understand and utilise these technologies for their maximum potential;
providing training that helps lay the foundation and strategies to implement innovations into business strategies for long term success;
creating clusters of like-minded organisations to explore industry 4.0 offerings collectively;
providing valuable insights and ideas to drive industry 4.0 thinking;
connecting and partnering with networks and co-funding models to drive uptake; and
carrying out research to explore the possibilities of industry 4.0 in construction, fabrication and business management.

Key research

Welding 4.0 research

The potential business and economic benefits of Construction 4.0 in New Zealand

Construction 4.0 and Mātauranga Māori

Facilities

Fab4.0Lab

Monitoring 4.0 and Design 4.0

Support and partnerships

Robotic automation in welding with Verbotics

Welding productivity and automation assessments for businesses

Work program in revolutionising conventional construction

Aotearoa New Zealand’s construction industry reached over $15 billion in 2019, making it a major contributor to GDP and employment, as well as developer of critical national infrastructure.

Despite this, it’s an industry that requires radical transformation and has long been criticised for its low productivity, inefficiencies, and contribution to New Zealand’s carbon emissions. It requires better integrated decision-making tools, requiring the complex data analysis capabilities offered by Industry 4.0.

While Industry 4.0 is starting to gain momentum in manufacturing, it has not been widely explored within construction. The challenge is that complex decisions are being made based on simple data inputs. The decision points in the process are done in linear silos with little inter-connection or data-derived decision support. The process is entrenched but far from optimised. For example, designers and specifiers don’t have adequate tools to optimise designs for ease of manufacture/fabrication, let alone the ability to resolve the conjoint considerations required to deliver design for sustainability, constructability, te ao Māori, resilience and affordability simultaneously. Such decisions require collection, connection and analysis of complex data sets.

This challenge requires an Industry 4.0 approach to solve these long-standing limitations and to revolutionise conventional construction.

In response, HERA put together an international team of global experts to seek funding to undertake the underpinning research needed to take advantage of the massive opportunity Industry 4.0 offers for Construction.

Our partners included the University of Auckland, Massey University, Pūhoro STEM Academy, University of Canterbury, Tufts University, University of Michigan, University of New Hampshire, and BRANZ.

Unfortunately we weren’t successful in gaining the competitive funding to support this work program, and are now exploring alternative funding avenues, and are still keen to hear from anyone interested in being engaged in this research program.

Interested to know more?

Contact our CEO, Troy Coyle; or Manager Structural Systems, Kaveh Andisheh to discuss further.