IOT and Industry 4.0 Big News or Big Noise?

IOT and Industry 4.0 Big News or Big Noise?

NEWS:

• The transformation of the industrial sector has begun. The big buzz at the World Economic Forum (WEF) is about the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ - “a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another”.

• The First Industrial revolution began by steam and water. The Second was the introduction of electricity to create the mass production. The Third is about the internet, communication technologies and digitization of everything. Now, a fourth is building on the Third, the digital revolution.

• The world is at the beginning of a revolution where there are huge advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, materials, and manufacturing technologies.

• We can see this happening in several areas already. Virtual reality that allows us to transport to new worlds and interact with information in new ways, robots, and software working side-by-side with humans. Machines are closing in on human ability with astonishing speed. Robots are replacing humans, not just on factory floors, but in homes too. 

  VIEWS:

• There are both opportunities and challenges. It can lift global incomes and improve lives worldwide, and the supply-side miracle due to technological innovation will lead to long-term gains in efficiency and productivity, says Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

• Once the automation takes over activities that humans used to do, that should free up time for people to do a better job of reaching out to the elderly, having smaller class sizes, helping kids with special needs, says Gates.

• If robots are going to take over human jobs, that means fewer people will be working, which in turn means fewer people will be paying taxes. “But you can’t just give up that income tax because that’s part of how you’ve been funding that level of human workers,” Gates said.

• This fourth revolution is fundamentally different from the previous three, which were characterized mainly by advances in technology.

• In the next few years, I expect the digital transformation of life to bring the huge changes everything from science to health care to robotics, says Mitchell Baker, Mozilla founder. 

   

THE MUSE:

• In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies, and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.

• Industry 4.0 is at an inflection point today- A recent Price Waterhouse Cooper's study of Industry 4.0 adoption found that 72% of manufacturing enterprises predict their use of data analytics will substantially improve customer relationships along the product life cycle.

• 35% of companies adopting Industry 4.0 predict revenue gains over 20% in the next five years.

• As automation increases, computers and machines will replace workers across a vast spectrum of industries, from drivers to accountants and estate agents to insurance agents. By one estimate, as many as 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk from automation.

• Fifty percent of jobs done by humans today are vulnerable to replacement by robots, according to McKinsey report. That could amount to a loss of about $15 trillion in wages worldwide and about $2.7 trillion in the United States. But the report further mentions that this might not happen until 2055, plus or minus 20 years.