Industry 4.0 gets talked about like it is one big thing. In practice, it is a data pipeline. Sensors generate readings. Gateways process them. Cloud platforms store and analyze them. Dashboards surface them. Automation acts on them.
If you are building the software layer for any of this, what matters is understanding how data flows through each stage because that is where the architecture decisions live.
The Six Stages of Factory Data Flow
1. Data Collection
Everything starts at the machine. Sensors capture temperature, vibration, pressure, runtime, energy consumption, cycle time, and production count. PLCs and industrial controllers share machine-level state.
