A Customer Feedback Platform for Vehicle Manufacturing Compliant with Industry 4.0 Vision

Sensors (Basel). 2018 Oct 1;18(10):3298. doi: 10.3390/s18103298.

Abstract

In the last decade, the growth of the automotive market with the aid of technologies has been notable for the economic, automotive and technological sectors. Alongside this growing recognition, the so called Internet of Intelligent Vehicles (IoIV) emerges as an evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT) applied to the automotive sector. Closely related to IoIV, emerges the concept of Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), which is the current revolution seen in industrial automation. IIoT, in its turn, relates to the concept of Industry 4.0, that is used to represent the current Industrial Revolution. This revolution, however, involves different areas: from manufacturing to healthcare. The Industry 4.0 can create value during the entire product lifecycle, promoting customer feedback, that is, having information about the product history throughout it is life. In this way, the automatic communication between vehicle and factory was facilitated, allowing the accomplishment of different analysis regarding vehicles, such as the identification of a behavioral pattern through historical driver usage, fuel consumption, maintenance indicators, so on. Thus, allowing the prevention of critical issues and undesired behaviors, since the automakers lose contact with the vehicle after the purchase. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a customer feedback platform for vehicle manufacturing in Industry 4.0 context, capable of collecting and analyzing, through an OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostics) scanner, the sensors available by vehicles, with the purpose of assisting in the management, prevention, and mitigation of different vehicular problems. An intercontinental evaluation conducted between Brazil and Italy locations shown the feasibility of platform and the potential to use in order to improve the vehicle manufacturing process.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; Internet of Industrial Things; Internet of Intelligent Vehicles; Internet of Things; OBD-II; monitoring.