Industry 4.0: A Revolution Like Never Before

What is this Industrial 4.0?

'Industry 4.0' is a term symbolizing the 4th Industrial Revolution being witnessed by the world at present. To understand what this revolution is all about, one needs to dive in the history of such revolutions.

It all started in the early 1800s and a few decades trailing that. With water and steam aiding the workers for manufacturing, this marked the world entering into the Industrial Age – Industry 1.0: the 1st industrial Revolution. This opened gates for newer technology, particularly impacting the transportation and textile industry.

In the latter half of the 19th century, the concept of Industry 2.0 started budding in the interiors of countries like Germany and the USA. Electricity soon became the primary power source for machines and portability as a concept gathered some ground. Subjects like division of labour, the importance of productivity & efficiency, and managerial understanding of the business were also gaining momentum. Mass production and Assembly line became the hallmarks of the revolution. The most famous name that one can associate within this revolution was Sir Henry Allen Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.

The last few decades of the 20th century marked the transformation from 'Industrial age' to 'Information age' marking the onset of Industry 3.0. Invention and use of Information Technology (IT) and electronic devices, like PLC (programmable logic control), transistors, ICC (integrated circuit chips), microcontrollers and many others, allowed the automation of individual machines to aid or completely replace the operators. ‘Lean’ or ‘waste reduced’ manufacturing, that had begun in Japan during the phase of Industry 2.0, was now commonplace and being applied everywhere in the world. Manufacturing cost reduction became the ultimate motive with more emphasis on variety, supply chain management, planning, scheduling and especially, customers.

Further, in 2011, at the Hanover Fair event, Germany introduced to the world – ‘Industry 4.0’. Germany is, arguably the most ‘high-tech’, manufacturing-focused country with the highest allocation for R&D in industrial technology as well as study. Robotic automation and data analytics formed the basis of this development. Now that everything is on the Internet and just the way people are connected online, the machines are also being connected to each other by the internet in the same way. Not only machine-to-man but also machine-to-machine. Internet of things and cloud computing – 2 state of the art technologies, have proved to be the most necessary components for the implementation of Industry 4.0. Cloud technology helps with data and its storing whereas internet allows sharing of information between the machines and authorized people, for further analysis and making better decisions with it. Despite machines getting smarter with artificial intelligence or more sophisticated algorithms and computing, the hallmark of this Revolution, not joking, is still ‘COMMUNICATION’.

Proper communication between humans has shown to remove misunderstanding/ misinterpretation, solve problems with ease and increase their productivity by a huge margin. Similarly, communication among machines themselves as well as with humans, have proved to be exceedingly beneficial for the working organization in various ways.

Image is taken from 'Spectral Engines'. All the copyrights of the image are reserved with the company.

Impact of Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is not limited to the manufacturing industry only as most might think. It has been widely accepted and used in a medley range of companies – domains ranging from finance to cyber-security, from hosting to services, and way beyond. It is estimated to be an industry of worth more than $152 billion by 2022.

Example - Alibaba’s ‘smart warehouse’ has been equipped with over 50 WiFi-equipped autonomous robots that are solely responsible for moving goods. It is believed that this has tripled their efficiency compared to when no automation was involved.

Example – Bosch in Homburg, Germany used Industry 4.0 which saved them approximately 5,00,000 euros in the first year itself. Output increased and inventory holding time decreased, both by significant percentages, which led to such a remarkable feat.

Some other companies that have led this revolution affront are Microsoft, ABB, Siemens, Festo, Amazon, IBM, Google, General Electric, Nvidia, Accenture, Upskill, Toyota and many more. I have deliberately taken the names of companies that are commonly heard and operate at a very large scale so that one realizes:

-> the potential the market holds for the revolution and how it is being welcomed by the biggest visionaries of the world

-> though there are smaller companies getting more aware about it now, it has not gathered the required attention at this scale of operation. There are various reasons, like capital required and management ignorance mainly, because of which the idea is not really appreciated at this level. But this makes the sector more lucrative and a market that can and will be tapped in the near future.

What is the future?

With technology growing so rapidly there are people already talking about what is next, after Industry 4.0. The term Industry 5.0 is already afloat among the bigger corporations, if not in the MSMEs (Micro-Small-Medium scale Enterprises). This is more like an extension to the current revolution. One belief is that the next revolution will allow customers to ‘completely’ customize their own products; and businesses would be able to automate their manufacturing process better and at their will, with real-time data at every stage.

Disclaimer : There are more aspects to Industry 4.0 like augmented reality, additive manufacturing, horizontal and vertical integrations in the organization and most importantly, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) which I shall write about in the later posts, as this one was just to make people aware of how the world is changing and arouse some interest in it. This will provide a general overview so that everyone can understand what Industry 4.0 is and what is there in it for them. If one wants to explore deeper and know more, follow my upcoming posts. The articles only hold my views and facts I have studied from various sources.