The Industry 4.0 Journey: Start the Learning Journey with the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0

The wave of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is breaking on manufacturing companies. In manufacturing, one of the buzzwords of the moment is "Smart production". Smart production involves manufacturing equipment with many sensors that can generate and transmit large amounts of data. Data and information from manufacturing operations are however not used by most manufacturing companies and this impedes organizational learning. To address this problem, the authors applied in a Smart Production Laboratory the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0) standard for Smart production. The instantiation contributed to organizational learning in the laboratory by collecting and sharing up-to-date information concerning manufacturing equipment.