NIKI 4.0 is short for "Non-Disruptive Kit for the Evaluation of Industry 4.0". The software was developed by the FZI Research Center for Computer Science , the Hahn-Schickard Society for Applied Research and the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences . Companies should be able use it to easily and cheaply expand their existing production facilities with sensors and information couplers. This will help them assess the benefits they can expect from the networking of machines and data exchange as part of an Industry 4.0 concept. In their press release , those involved explain that the production plants and machines remain unchanged and that the additional data acquisition does not initially affect the production processes.

In addition to the central software, the kit also includes a communication gateway and a tool for visualizing the collected data on the basis of augmented reality. NIKI 4.0 is available as open source software on the GitHub .