Leveraging the Capabilities of Industry 4.0 for Improving Energy Efficiency in Smart Factories

Factories use many manufacturing processes that consume a lot of energy and highly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The introduction of the concept of Industrial Internet in USA and Industry 4.0 in Europe offers many opportunities to reduce energy consumption in these factories. Introducing and utilizing smart techniques for the applications pertinent to manufacturing processes within the Industry 4.0 domain can offer many benefits for reducing energy consumption in smart factories. This paper investigates and discusses these opportunities and benefits. This paper also discusses the roles of Industry 4.0 technologies in enabling these opportunities. Consequently, introducing these capabilities will help significantly reduce both production costs and greenhouse gas emissions. This paper then provides a benefit analysis that shows the advantages of such leverage. In addition, this paper offers an enabling architecture and its components that include a cyber-physical system manufacturing services' layer, a fog manufacturing services' layer, a cloud manufacturing services' layer, and a blockchain-based service-oriented middleware to support such opportunities.