About Industry 4.0

Background

The fourth industrial revolution: Overall the inexorable shift from simple digitization (the Third Industrial Revolution) to innovation based on combinations of technologies (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is forcing companies to re-examine the way they do business. Klaus Schwab, World Economic Forum 14 Jan 2016.

Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution is the revolution that researchers summarise with the word digitalisation.

Central to this fourth industrial revolution are technologies like internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, robots, and artificial intelligence. The aim is smarter and more efficient manufacturing and the focus is largely mass-personalisation.

The year 2010 is often seen as the year that marks the start of this era. That year sensors became much cheaper, which indirectly made possible the start of the smart phone’s conquest of the world. For the first time the number of connected devices per person exceeded one.