Sensor Networks for Smart Manufacturing Processes

Each factory and manufacturing plant needs a flexible and reliable in-plant resource supply to serve production processes efficiently. Manufacturing systems are composed of several numbers of elements, workstations, machines and logistics resources. Production line is a complex system because of the complicated manufacturing process, multiple types, high machining difficulty and many special processes in it. In the Industry 4.0 based on smart manufacturing, it is essential to support the processes with intelligent sensor networks. In this article, we give a brief overview about sensors often used in manufacturing processes. Sensor networks generate a massive and increasing amount of data that needs to be processed. Computationally intensive algorithms are used for the data processing (image, voice and signal processing, different classification functions, numeric optimization routines). Finally, we discuss how GPGPU can improve the real-time processing of data generated by intelligent sensor networks.