In their joint statement, the Research Council Industrie 4.0 and the Plattform Industrie 4.0 criticise the use of the term Industry 5.0. What are the arguments against developing the term further?
I developed the term in December 2010 during a discussion with Henning Kagermann and Wolf-Dieter Lukas in the acatech project office as a more catchy term for ‘cyber-physical production systems’, which we had previously proposed as a future project in our promoter group of the German government’s Research Union. The idea was that after the first three industrial revolutions, which could be read about in every book on industrial history, the introduction of the Internet of Things in factories would give rise to a completely new era of production through a fourth revolution. I then visualised this in a step-by-step diagram, which is now used in various adaptations in numerous publications worldwide to illustrate the four phases of industrial development. The ‘4.0’ was also intended to trigger a connotation to the usual designations of system versions in the IT world, which emphasises the essential importance of software and data for this fourth industrial revolution.
Any linguist can confirm that a term changes meaning over the course of its use. Today, Industrie 4.0 encompasses concepts such as digital twins, administration shells, generative AI production planning and team robotics, which did not even exist in 2010. This elasticity of the term ‘Industrie 4.0’ is an advantage, as all technological, economic and social components were never fully known at the start of a new industrial revolution. It is not expedient to want to proclaim a new industrial revolution less than 30 years later, which only includes a few possible further developments of the core concepts, as these can be incorporated as evolutionary conceptual extensions in a natural way as long as the objectives of Industrie 4.0 have not yet been achieved in all dimensions.
In the joint statement, the broad understanding of Industrie 4.0 is emphasised in addition to its topicality. In view of the very dynamic technological, economic and institutional development since the concept was introduced at the Hannover Messe 2011, as one of the founding fathers of the term, where do you see current challenges for the industry and priorities in the implementation and further development of Industrie 4.0?
We should confidently state that, as the world’s leading factory equipment supplier, we still have a global lead with our latest smart factories based on industrial AI. With Industrie 4.0, we have triggered a huge wave of innovation – for the first time in many years from Germany. The term Industrie 4.0 is now not only established in Europe, but is also a conceptual export hit from Germany in the USA, Japan and China, playing a central role at all major industrial trade fairs since the Hannover Messe 2011.
A key challenge is to maintain this momentum and drive forward the fourth industrial revolution worldwide, for example in India and Africa. Ultimately, the success of the first three industrial revolutions is also due to the delayed but global spread of the respective waves of innovation. I would like to illustrate this with two specific examples.
Professor Marik from the CIIRC in Prague published a much-cited book on ‘Prumysl 4.0’ (Czech for Industrie 4.0) back in 2016. In 2019, one of the largest research projects was launched with EUR 50 million in funding for six and a half years from the EU’s Teaming programme to establish a distributed centre of excellence in the Czech Republic with scientific and technical start-up support from Germany.
The goal was quickly achieved of bringing both industrialised countries up to the same level, despite the time lead of institutes such as DFKI with its world’s first smart factory, in order to be able to cooperate successfully on an equal footing between two important industrial nations in research and industry transfer.
It is very pleasing that, long after Germany’s start-up aid for the Czech Republic, Prague in Jaipur (India) is now again providing start-up aid to teach the basic technologies for Industrie 4.0 such as AI, robotics and cyber-physical systems in a new institute of the private NIMS University, which will open in 2024. The new institute is modelled on the CIIRC in Prague and, as the Marik Institute, bears the name of the pioneer of Industrie 4.0 in the Czech Republic. This has created a ‘scientific and technical supply chain’ from Germany as the country of origin of Industrie 4.0 via the Czech Republic to India, which is of great importance in view of the need for skilled labour for the further implementation of Industrie 4.0 in Germany.
This year, a Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution was established in Kigali (Rwanda, Africa), which will host the ‘Global AI Summit on Africa’ in October 2024 to show how AI is advancing the implementation of Industrie 4.0. An experienced researcher from DFKI, which serves as a model for the C4IR, will now work at the centre for two years as a ‘development assistant’.
With the publication of the joint statement, the spokespersons of the Research Council and the Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Plattform Industrie 4.0 emphasised that companies and SMEs in particular are now aware of the importance of Industrie 4.0. What key opportunities and possibilities do you see for industrial companies, but also for society, as the focus on Industrie 4.0 continues?
The even broader applicability and availability of artificial intelligence technologies will drastically simplify the introduction of Industrie 4.0 and the migration of existing systems. At present, complexity hurdles and the lack of highly specialised specialists with up-to-date and interdisciplinary expertise in computer science, mechanical engineering, production technology and ergonomics are still obstacles for many companies, and SMEs in particular, when it comes to introducing Industrie 4.0. These barriers can be overcome, for example, with the latest generation of collaborative robots, which no longer need to be programmed in detail because they generate the programme code partially autonomously using machine learning and large language and action models (LxM technologies).
However, there is still a considerable need for research in the field of emotional and social intelligence in interaction with robots in order to transfer teamwork, as is common practice among skilled workers in many factories today, to hybrid teams of collaborative, mobile robots and humans, each of which contributes different skills to solving a production task. First of all, it still needs to be clarified how a dynamic and fair distribution of tasks in the team can be achieved in a way that adapts to the situation. The goal of achieving the ‘team spirit’ known from social and industrial psychology with the mutual support of all players through transparent and multimodal communication for all members of a hybrid team is also very ambitious.
So there is still a lot to do for the next decade of Industrie 4.0 – let’s get to work!
Original publication:
https://en.acatech.de/3-questions-for-wolfgang-wahlster-about-the-statement-by-the-research-council/