Industry 4.0, IIoT and the automation pyramid

The education's competency goal no. 17 requires that the apprentice can account for the development within industrial automation technology based on the different layers of the automation pyramid, as well as how Industry 4.0 solutions—including cloud, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and digital twins—affect the automation technician's work tasks. It is no longer enough to understand one installation in isolation; you must understand how it communicates with the rest of the business.

§The Automation Pyramid — the Classic Layers

The automation pyramid is a way of describing how control and data are traditionally organised in layers, from the floor to management. At the bottom you find the field and control level: sensors, actuators and PLCs that control the physical process in real time. Above that is the SCADA level, which monitors and operates multiple PLCs together. Above SCADA is MES (Manufacturing Execution System), which controls production itself — orders, material consumption, quality. At the top is the ERP level, the company's overall system for finance, procurement and planning.

§When the pyramid is solved

Industrial IoT (IIoT) challenges the strict layer-by-layer thinking. Instead of data having to travel up through each level, sensor data can today be sent directly to cloud services or analysis tools while the PLC still controls the physical process. This provides faster access to data across the organisation but also sets new demands on the automation technician: networks, data collection and communication between industrial systems become part of the daily work — something competency goal no. 16 directly addresses with requirements for installation and troubleshooting on industrial networks.

§Artificial intelligence and Big Data in production

Large amounts of operational data from sensors can be used for more than just monitoring — they can be analysed for patterns that predict when a component is likely to fail (condition-based maintenance), or to find bottlenecks in a production. The professional committee for the training has also pointed out that artificial intelligence is expected to be increasingly used in automation technical work, and that future apprentices should therefore become familiar with the technology already during training.

§IT security becomes part of the trade

The more a facility is connected to networks and cloud, the greater the risk that it can be attacked or manipulated from outside. Learning objective no. 18 therefore requires that the apprentice, based on system understanding of automation technology, can take the necessary IT security measures in relation to their own work tasks. In practice this means things like knowing access codes and network segmentation, not connecting unsecured equipment directly to the internet, and understanding that a production facility disrupted by a cyber attack can be as serious as a mechanical fault.

• 01The Automation Pyramid: PLC/field → SCADA → MES → ERP
• 02IIoT sends data directly to analysis and cloud, independent of the classical layers
• 03Digital twin: updated digital model of the physical system
• 04AI and Big Data are used, among other things, for condition-based maintenance
• 05IT security at facility level (OT) becomes part of the daily task