Electric Motor Production 4.0 – Application Potentials of Industry 4.0 Technologies in the Manufacturing of Electric Motors

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is accompanied by a variety of technologies which offer great potential for optimizing the manufacturing of electric motors. However, the application of I4.0 technologies in this sector has hardly been examined yet. For determining I4.0 potentials in the electric motor production, a structured approach is required since the variety of sub-processes and production technologies results in a vast number of possible combinations. Therefore, this paper first compares different generic approaches for identifying, selecting and implementing I4.0 use cases. Building on this, a methodical approach is derived in order to tap the numerous I4.0 potentials within the electric motor production. On the one hand, use cases can be derived from current technological opportunities resulting from application examples and best practices in research and industry. On the other hand, concrete problems in critical manufacturing processes can give rise to the application of novel I4.0 solutions. By presenting a comprehensive overview of promising application scenarios, this paper mainly facilitates the identification of I4.0 potentials in the electric motor production from an opportunity-driven perspective. In addition to approaches directly addressing the electric motor production, concepts can be derived from related processes in other application domains. Examples are provided by outlining a selection of the presumably most relevant use cases. The results indicate that especially data-driven approaches, i.e. data analytics and machine learning, offer great potential in electric motor production. As an outlook, I4.0 potentials can also be disclosed from a problem-pull perspective, supplementing the opportunity-push approach of this paper.