Industry 4.0 For Dummies

Industry 4.0 it’s the technological framework intended to transform our manufacturing plants into those “smart factories” able to elevate to an industrial scale the very same revolution that in the last ten years did have a so huge impact on our personal lives. Today we are all experiencing how smart phones, social networks, embedded AI, home automation and the App economy are changing our way to relate to each other and to do things; these very same technologies (together with many others) will change the way we will all work tomorrow.

The first industrial revolution took place in the late eighteenth century with the mechanization, due to the invention (and application) of the steam engine from James Watt. The second industrial revolution took place in the early twentieth century with the setup of the first assembly lines to support the large scale production of Henry Ford automotive factories. The third industrial revolution is dated mid-twentieth century, when electronics has been first applied to numeric controlled machined (NC’s/PLC’s). Today is the time for cyber-physical systems (CPS’s), which are the integration of computation, networking, and physical processes, and which are promising to transform the way people interact with engineered systems, just as the internet has transformed the way people interact with information.

The term Industry 4.0 has been introduced by the German government (Industrie 4.0) in 2011, at the Hannover Fair. With the ambition of being both the leading supplier and the leading market for Industry 4.0, Germany is trying to leverage on its engineering expertise (Bosch) together with its competences in automation (Siemens) and ERP’s (SAP). Germany is aiming to stay one step ahead of the competition, creating defending barriers by the need of extremely high investments to be paired with cutting-edge technological know-how. Not discouraged at all, US and China (and the rest of the world) are of course joining the race.

The set of technologies (above) which are usually referred to when speaking of Industry 4.0, are indeed nothing brand new. Actually it looks like a potpourri of all the disruptive innovations we heard about in the last decade. True it is that, when these technologies will reach maturity and large scale application, there will be the conditions to radically transform the way our companies will work and the way they will relate each other and towards the market, their shareholders, and their employees. Having already found it’s way into our pockets (smart phones), the internet of things is finding its way into production (smart factories).

If you are interested in Industry 4.0 you could give a try to these previous stories:

How Industry 4.0 could be the cost intensive answer to tomorrow complexity, and which the relationship with Lean

Mastering complexity with Industry 4.0_I have been an enthusiast of Lean since when I heard for the first time the term JIT (Just-In-Time) when I was at the…_medium.com

A day with Industry 4.0: it sounds like sci-fi, but it’s happaning just know

Life 4.0_My smartphone woke me up at 5:30 AM. That day I had a work interview in Milan, for which I had to catch the train which…_medium.com

Back to the future: the legacy of Industry 4.0 and the next industrial revolutions yet to come

A shortsighted animal?_I was just a seven year old boy when I watched Blade Runner for the very first time. I can still remember the feeling…_medium.com