Industry 4.0 toward Sustainability

บทคัดย่อ

This paper presents the global trends that influence global industries including industries in Thailand. In Europe, the concept of Factories of the Future has been adopted by European Commission to bring industries back home since 2008.  Many countries in several regions both in Europe and outside Europe are in the same influent and develop their own similar initiative to modernize their industries to be more competitive. The most successful industrial development is in Germany where they introduced the concept of Industry 4.0. They have started the scheme of Industry 4.0 several years ago and have since become successful in increasing their competitiveness. They have applied automation and robotics together with ICT, the so called Cyber-Physical systems; it changes their way of manufacturing and doing businesses. However the context of Factories of the Future goes beyond modernizing manufacturing infrastructures. It involves other areas such as human well-being, green production and new materials development. This paper provides strong reasons why Thai Industries have to develop themselves to the new level toward Industry 4.0 to be more competitive globally, and move Thailand as a whole up to become one of the higher-income nation. The Federation of Thai Industries has put up several efforts to move Thai industries toward Industry 4.0 by creating several strategies. They will be elaborated here.