Bespoke muesli sets industry 4.0 on its way [Manufacturing Digitisation]

THE EUROPEAN UNION is keen to win back manufacturing but has, so far, limited ambitions. In 2012, the group of nations set a target for manufacturing to represent 20 per cent of 'total value added' by 2020. To get there, European manufacturing sector leader Germany needs do very little - it's the other nations that are letting the side down. But Germany is the spiritual home of the technological fightback. Having supplied many highly automated machine tools to Chinese factories, Germany has taken centre stage in the Industry 4.0, or Industrie 4.0, movement. And the country is spawning companies such as MyMuesli, which uses an automated plant to produce individually mixed boxes of breakfast cereal that employ the concepts behind Industry 4.0.