Why Industry 4.0 Sucks

De: Alasdair Gilchrist

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This is a bold, illustrious, and noble defense:
Why Industry 4.0 Sucks!
Renegade – Industry 4,0 was the dream, the purpose, and the realisation of futuristic manufacturing, As such it became the policy and blueprint for global adoption. Its fame and celebrity somehow slipped to the notoriety fueling the feeble fabrication behind the 4th Industrial Revolution.

For almost a decade now I have been heavily involved with Manufacturers, Industries, and Universities in researching Industry 4.0, from a theoretical, academic, and practical perspective. I have always been intrigued by the manufacturing phenomena that is Industry 4.0. So much so that I wrote a best-selling book; 'Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things. I was so impressed I bought into the promise and seemingly endless potential with great gusto. The future seemed bright - and Industry 4.0 was the future.

Time and tide would take me to other shores and different work in Cloud Architecture, but I always tried to keep up with Industry 4.0 or so I thought. When I revisited my old haunting ground with the full intention of updating and revising my earlier book, which was published by Springer in early 2015 with a new edition for 2022, I was in for a surprise.

What I discovered appalled me - Industry 4.0, once the proud and enviable flagship policy for European Manufacturing and the inspiration for many an Industry 4.0 initiative around the globe was now a shambolic derelict town.

Not only was its very name misappropriated and used as a soulless generic label leaving it eviscerated of all concepts, principles, and purpose - it is now a meaningless synonym for the equally vacuous buzz phrase – the 4th Industrial Revolution - a zombie.

In this book, I will detail how and why it all went wrong for Industry 4.0 with quantifiable and documented evidence of its Cathartic collapse and at whose hands. I will explain the avoidable reasons behind the staggering failure rate. Indeed, just over 1% of those who embarked on the journey were able to claim a return of any value, in the form of productivity, efficiency, customer experience, supply chain integration, smart factories, or embarrassingly, any value at all, let alone the desperate hopes of a return on investment. In the EU, the UK, India, China, and even the US Industry 4.0 has failed!

The EU commission in 2021 branded Industry 4.0 unfit for purpose and one of the root causes for many of the problems society faces today such as technology monopolies and giant wage disparity - this was coming from Industry 4.0’s sponsor and authors!

However, Industry 4.0 was not a technology it was a policy supported by a robust strategy. If it failed it was due to human ignorance, hubris, and greed rather than any inherent technical deficiencies albeit it was rife with contradictions, ambiguity, and confusion certainty of its own making. But Industry 4.0’s failure was a failure of business, technology, and consultancy hyperbole, not of its inherent framework or policy.

But all is not lost, there is still hope that Industry 4.0 is redeemable, and as such I propose some tried and

tested methods that could help you avoid the all-too-common mistakes and missteps that plagued Industry 4.0 from the outset and that still prevail even today. Forewarned is forearmed and this information will greatly assist you along your own Industry 4.0 journey.

As there is little to no consensus on the provenance of Industry 4.0 let alone its definition. I have strived in this book to detail its history so that we can at least start with a common reference point. If there is one definitive characteristic of Industry 4.0 it is its ambiguity that sets it aside from others as a world-class enigma.

I strongly recommend that you do not undertake an Industry 4.0 journey or even a pilot project before reading this book in its entirety or you will surely fail! Well... 99% of the time.