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Open Industry 4.0 Alliance

Announced at Hannover Messe 2019, the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance is a group designed for technology suppliers and end users of all sizes to collaborate around an open framework from which to deliver interoperable technologies and services — with the aim of accelerating industry’s digital transformation.

The four layers of the OI4 platform.
The four layers of the OI4 platform.

Multivendor alliances and partnerships have been a clear trend across the industrial automation sector in response to high levels of end user interest in pursuing various Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industry 4.0 initiatives to digitize their operations. These partnerships are arising from the realization that no one or two companies can offer everything the market needs when it comes to digitization.

Despite all the interest in IIoT and Industry 4.0 from end users and the growing array of alliances to support it, there remains a certain level of reticence among end users to make the leap.

“There’s been a slow adoption of Industry 4.0 because no large manufacturing companies want to cope with an ecosystem of multiple cloud systems—and there is no one cloud system available that can do it all today,” according to Patrice Favennec, senior vice president of sales, IOT, at Hilscher, a supplier of industrial communication and networking technologies. “These users want a simplified interface between the different systems they need. They want us — industrial technology suppliers — to build APIs between different systems.”

To address this market reality, Hilscher, along with Arvos GmbH, Balluff, Beckhoff, Endress+Hauser, Gebhardt Fördertechnik, ifm, KUKA, MultiVac, Pepperl+Fuchs, SAP, Schmidtsche Schack, Samson, and Wika Alexander Wiegand have formed the Open Industry 4.0 Alliance (OI4).

Noting that many of the alliance’s founding members are located in central Europe, Favennec said that although the alliance is originating there, the intent is to take the it global.

“This is a new approach,” said Favennec, describing the alliance as being focused on the interoperability of the members’ products and services, as well as on applying those technologies to digitize end user operations. End users and OEMs are invited to join the alliance to avail themselves of the interoperability efforts conducted by member suppliers.

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