What’s Industry 4.0?

It is one of the great buzzwords and refers to the fourth Industrial Revolution. This fourth industrial revolution reflects how smart factories connect the workforce with intelligent machines and robots.

The first Industrial Revolution began in the 1770s when we moved from hand-made to machine-made, from farms to the first factories using steam and water power.
One hundred years later came the second Industrial Revolution with electricity.

Next up was the Third Industrial Revolution, which brought us automation with assembly lines. Thus, it was the beginning of the factories as we know them today.

Then we started to use the computer that arrived back in 1970; that would allow us to automate part of the manual work in the factories.

Electronics came to all of us, and then the latest appeared, the networked industrial revolution, which has just begun and is called Industry 4.0. Now it’s not just about individual computerized machines but about a whole network of them and how they communicate.

We now have highly industrialized countries with smart factories using some of the underlying technologies of this new industrial revolution: the Internet of Things.

That means some companies have intelligent machines with networked sensors that talk to each other, diagnose their problems, and alert someone if something is wrong.

There is another feature called Big Data. The fact that all these machines generate large volumes of data every second requires us to analyze it at the same speed to put it to good use.

This experience suggests that those who own Big Data could benefit from this data using artificial intelligence. The owners can improve it with machine learning to increase their ability to use predictive maintenance. That means an assembly line device notifies a maintenance center of what could break down the next day. So they can proactively prepare and fix things before it happens.

The fourth industrial revolution has given us intelligent robots, autonomous vehicles, and drones. Today supply chains are interconnected where ships communicate with warehouses and warehouses communicate with trucks.

Industry 4.0 also means we can now have ships in ports that can track all their containers. Warehouses can be ready even if there is a delay. We can ship things directly locally using the drone delivery robots that come to our house to deliver the goods.

Industry 4.0 is a new world of smart connected machines and intelligent robots. But only some sectors live this reality. Many of us are still in the stage of rethinking our businesses before moving from the third Industrial Revolution to this brave new world of Industry 4.0.

Before this happens, we must be able to re-educate our workforce and develop new digital and soft skills. We need to discover people’s role in the fourth industrial revolution. This advance is not homogeneous, as previous industrial revolutions were not.

There will still be many industries where we talk about collaborative work with the help of cobots and others that must be totally or partially automated.

We must ensure everyone can find a place in this new reality and participate actively in this knowledge economy. We could improve our productivity by being inclusive and learning from each other.

What does Duger do in this area? We help the public and private sectors achieve this. We help prepare to include a new generation of youth that is part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

We help shape your business processes to include an existing skilled workforce with cobots to leverage them jointly. As in previous industrial revolutions, public and private organizations must prepare for this change, or they will rapidly lose value in the global supply chain.

In the same way, it is essential to understand how important it is for the new generations to get the proper education to improve their existing skills and constantly learn throughout their lives.

Hopefully, artificial intelligence or cobots will not affect their jobs so everyone can participate with dignity in a global knowledge economy. According to predictive analytics, it is sad to admit that many countries may lose more than their chances of increasing their GDP if they do not invest in their people’s future and improve their education systems. To cooperate better and learn together to solve more complex challenges.