The 4th Industrial Revolution : Technology driven or human driven

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, popularly known as i4.0,  can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines. These are integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes. Embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa.

While these capabilities are reliant on the technologies and infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies.

So what does this mean for you and me? It means a sea change in how we live, how we work and how we communicate. While we will see the top 5 impacts of I4.0 on us, let us understand first how we are connected to industry or how we are related to industry and how i4.0 will effect us:

   A. We are buyers / consumers – meaning that the reason for the existence of industry is “us” and our needs and demands.

B. We are workers – industry and businesses need us to run them
C. We constitute society – within which norms and practices Industries and businesses have to operate.

Essentially, industry and business exist to serve us. Hence, changes in the way we live, will necessarily bring in changes in the way industry and business need to operate and serve us.

So what are we today?  20 years ago, when we needed a product we went to the shop which would store that kind of product and buy it. It could be electrical goods, grains, foods, medicines etc. All under different roofs.

Then came a time when we did not need to go to different shops but procured most of what we needed under one roof.  Now, we are in a time when we do not need to go anywhere; just order online.

Throughout these 20 years, one phenomenon was quietly happening, which is that we started getting digitally connected to each other. We became citizens of a connected world be it through Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and many other social media platforms.

This trend will continue. Virtually everyone on earth will be connected very soon. And this is resulting in three important drivers of change:

1.  Creation of connected wisdom:

People not only get connected for chit chat, but also to exchange views about products, news about products, uses of products, in short they create forums of consumers. These forums then allows consumers and buyers to access the wisdom of the crowd in making purchasing decisions.

2.    Creation of customer pools of products and brand images (which maybe very different to what the company intended.

3.    Conversion of Purchase decisions from personal to social decisions.

4.    Peer pressure will drive the need for immediate gratification and to become inclusively different.

These four trends actually change the way we do business and turns  it upside down. Earlier, products were made based on what marketers THOUGHT we needed or liked. Going forwarded the consumer pools and demand for inclusive exclusivity will create products which business will need to produce. 

This then will necessitate crowd sourced designs, quick manufacturing, quick  delivery and extremely high level of quality. 

Furthermore then, the customer – producer framework will also change where - 

A. Quality needs to be at the highest – If there were to be any glitches in quality, the same will be reflected in the connected forums almost instantaneously and a unwanted opinion will be formed which will get reflected in consumer forums.
B.  Price needs to be at the lowest  - A connected market and a connected consumer ensures that NO producer has the opportunity to charge unfair prices. In your own case, when you go shopping and faced with a purchase decision, don’t you check the price on Google using your smartphone?
C. Design and manufacturing need to be almost real time – More and more we are demanding immediate gratification of “made for me” products. This trend is on the upswing and will continue to be so. Quick designs and quick production will be key to survival.
D. Products and producers have to be responsible. – Lastly and equally important, the young buyers who constitute the majority, are extremely conscious about their environment and it’s production. Any product or production process which does not lead to sustainability will be killed by the consumer groups, social groups and the connected customer.

To make this possible, we need extremely high levels of automation, process changes and design changes. This is where Industry 4.0 will make an impact on each one of us. For example, products like 3 D printers will drastically reduce time to market. Or Artificial Intelligence will enable most repetitive r process driven jobs to be done by machines. All of this will feed the growing demand for quickly available customized products.  

Now. How does this effect us? What will evolved is a new skill set you will need to learn and adapt to, in addition to your domain degree. This skill set will set you apart from being employable or being unemployable.

Slide 9 and 10

Today, according to a study, industry needs the following skill sets and we have put this up here as a weightage. (pause)

The World Economic Forum has listed the top 10 Skill sets from 2020, which are very different from 2015 in terms of ranking.

Slide 11

Why do you need these skill sets in addition to your degree? Consider the following

A.   Technology will take over most common tasks and jobs. Humans will need to adapt to working with machines rather than other humans

B.   Machine to machine collaboration will be high, humans will be required to manage and understand those collaboration outcomes

C.  Humans will program machines with intelligence, in the respective domains.

D.  Humans will use their EQ to add to quality of decisions by machines

E.   Humans will need to seek and identify problems which need to be solved and program machines to solve them.

F.   Innovation will be the name of the game! The merging of the physical and digital world will open up a plethora of opportunities for humans with relevant skills, be it NLP or complex problem solving or project management or process engineering among many others.

G.  Specialization a hard skill OR a soft skill will multiply worker success. Because of automation, specialist will not be required as full time workers. This will give an opportunity for people to use their skills in more than one organization, simultaneously, leading to high earning and productivity.

Machines can do what machines are programmed for. They cannot create emotion, nor sustainability, nor relationships, nor anything else we humans can do apart from mechanical tasks and intelligence based decision making.

Slide 12

Here are some recommendations which you could use to plan your learning, if you need a copy you can write me and we will send you one. 

At the end , I hope you have a little more awareness about the future of this world and your roles. Before I end, I wish to share three pieces of advice with you.

Slide No 13

1.   TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LEARNING

You are responsible for what you do, for ensuring that you do the work that will be required of you. There will be no one to check up on you, you are accountable to yourself. Learning is what will make or break you.

2.   TALK TO PEOPLE. Talk to your classmates, your housemates, your friends, or mentors. Find networks on LinkedIn and other professional social media.  Automation does not mean solitude. It means you become social and  collaborative, two key requirements in the new economy.

EMBRACE DIFFERENCE The World is a melting pot. You have come from different backgrounds and communities to pursue your ambitions as students. In a large institution or an organization it can be tempting to stick with the familiar and that is especially true with respect to the people with whom you associate. But it would be a lost opportunity to stick with your own all the time – embrace difference. Get to know people who are different to you. It could be someone from a different part of the country, or from another country, of a different ethnicity, a different religion, who has