The Fourth Industrial Revolution in a nutshell
In some of my previous blogs, I mentioned how some technologies had their impact in what many call “Industry 4.0”, without ever explaining why this new data driven industry takes this name and what defines it. Here I’m going to give a simple explanation of what the Fourth Industrial Revolution is, how the Industry 4.0 came to existence and how it’s changing the global market.
The history of mankind is marked by transformations and progress, yet the speed and effects of the digital revolution in progress prove to be as unique and disruptive as ever. The fourth industrial revolution, exploiting the possibility of millions of people connected by fixed and mobile devices and promoting the adoption of an ever wider set of innovative technologies whose speed of development and dissemination is ever increasing, is changing markets and production models around the world.
Fourth industrial revolution: when it starts and why
Retracing the industrial evolution, from the first revolution recorded by the adoption of steam engines, passing through the second industrial era triggered by the use of electricity, up to the third industrial revolution linked to the introduction of electronics and information technology in the lines of production, it is easy to identify in each historical moment an event triggering the driving effect of change.
The fourth industrial revolution is subsequent to the advent of the internet and related to the intuition that any device associated with its identity and integrated with sensor networks can be programmed to interact or be part of even complex systems that can be reached remotely.
Although today it is not possible to predict which technologies will prevail in terms of diffusion and consolidation, there is clear evidence that the definition of a digital transformation plan and its correct implementation, regardless of the technologies used, is having a strong impact. on companies, to the point of distorting their strategic positioning. From the point of view of both production and distribution, the efficiency of the company’s vital activities — and therefore the ability to carve out slices of the public and the market — increasingly depends on the adoption of the right technologies.
The benefits of Industry 4.0 for businesses
Industrial and manufacturing companies today have the opportunity to increase their competitiveness and efficiency through the interconnection of plants and people, exploiting the cooperation of internal and external resources and aggregating and analyzing even large amounts of data. And these possibilities are multiplying day by day thanks to continuous investments in fields such as Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data, Cloud Computing, Collaborative Robotics, Augmented and Virtual Reality, 3D Printing, Autonomous Vehicles, Nanotechnology and Biotechnology.
Like previous revolutions, the fourth industrial revolution has the power to alter national and world economic and power balances, as well as improve the quality of life of populations and workers around the world. Booking a taxi, buying a plane ticket by making online payments, as well as accessing content through mobile applications or buying a product on online showcases, are just some of the benefits we enjoy on a daily basis. Similarly, technological innovation is able to lead companies to reduce production costs, to increase earnings and productivity. Transport and communication costs decrease, logistics departments and production chains use shared communication channels, research, development and marketing departments have the means to place the right attention on the product.
New technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution
Today any physical product or service can be equipped with digital capabilities that can increase its value. Each industry has technologies available to innovate its core areas, with a range of influence that can reach, influence and enhance every human and mechanical aspect of the company. The technologies related to the Internet of Things and Big Data are the most mature ones and the most adopted, while Cloud Manufacturing and the Advanced Human Machine Interface are candidates to become the next reference technologies for the next few years. On the rise are the innovative applications that impact the processes that interact with work in the factory, such as those relating to the development of a product, from the management of suppliers to the definition of the life cycle of the product itself.
By equipping the machinery with sensors capable of collecting metrics and performance values, the conservation, management and processing of such data soon became a hot topic of the fourth industrial revolution. Cloud solutions are also increasingly used to run applications and monitors with a distributed approach, but also to save data by associating them with replication and retention logics. In this context, some clouds are taking the limelight for their ability to provide the right solutions to SMEs embarking on the path of digital evolution. Similarly, platforms capable of handling large amounts of data such as the ELK stack and TICK stack equipped with time series databases such as InfluxDB, are spreading thanks also to their flexibility of use.