Control of Externally Provided Processes, Products and Services

Seminar paper from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, , language: English, abstract: Powered by hydro and steam power, at the end of the 18th century mechanical production facilities began to replace human labour. What is today known as the Industrial Revolution allowed for a far more efficient use of resources such as labour and soil. During the Second Industrial Revolution towards the end of the 19th century manual labour started to be increasingly replaced by mass production (as developed by Frederick Winslow Taylor), the introduction of assembly-line work (promoted by Henry Ford) thanks to the use of electricity. The introduction of electronic control systems and information technology in the 1970s finally heralded the Third Industrial Revolution. All three industrial revolutions have brought about accelerated processes and a degree of automation. In an increasingly global market the Internet of Things (products, production facilities, tools) connects the real with the virtual world and Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are the foundation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0 - see Figure 1). CPS is an umbrella term for software-intensive embedded systems (ES) which are based on connected, integrated hardware- and software components in products or industrial production facilities (smart production) that are able to communicate with each other. Exactly these global markets with geographically div...