Manufacturing is constantly evolving. It truly began in the 18th century as industry 1.0, using steam-powered engines to bring on its mechanization. From there, industrial manufacturing evolved to include electrification in the 19th century and then electronics and automation in the 20th century. Now, we have arrived at what is being dubbed industry 4.0 which is being defined by digitization. So, where are we now and what is the future of industrial manufacturing?

There is an old joke about the “Factory of the Future.” It goes something like this: the factory of the future will only have machines, and two employees: namely one dog and one human. The dog’s job is to keep the human from interfering with any of the machines, and the human’s job is to feed the dog.

The point is that manufacturing is changing, and particularly the direct role of humans.

In the context of the historical arc of manufacturing we are told that we are currently in version 4.0.

By most accounts, industry version 1.0 began in the 18^th century with the utilization of steam-powered engines in the making of things – this is often called the mechanization of manufacturing – when we transitioned from exclusively hand-crafted production to leveraging machines to replace laborious and slow activities, most impactfully in the textile industry. The 19^th century saw the electrification of manufacturing processes, and the birth of the assembly line – this is also when we started to see mass production drive down costs and increasingly make products affordable. The 20^th century saw the advent of electronics and automation – and manufacturing processes started to increasingly rely on computers, control systems and robotics.

Which brings us to Industry 4.0. If mechanization was crucial to industry 1.0, electrification to 2.0, and automation to 3.0, what is central to industry 4.0? 

In one word, digitization. But since this is the era we currently are in, we have many more buzz words, like the Internet of Things, cloud computing, digital manufacturing, smart factories, and digital twins. The important concept here that ties all of these things together is data. We exited industry 3.0 with connected computers and systems that were tied into machines. What these machines began supplying to these systems was data – the temperature of a plastic as it was being squeezed into a mold, images of a part that showed whether it had any defects in it, and so on. Industry 4.0 takes this several steps further and uses this data more powerfully than we have ever done before. 

A smart factory of Industry 4.0 simply brings together data and uses it powerfully. 

A simple analogy for this is if our brain and body were operating for years without sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell – and gradually our senses came online, one by one. It would give us the ability to combine information to function infinitely better: just like with our senses, which combine in our central nervous systems, industry is developing the “internet of things;” like our brain’s memory and processing functions, we are developing cloud computing in industry; like our ability to simulate reality in our minds to make decisions on what to do next, we have the equivalent in digital twins. 

So, are we there yet? As I mentioned earlier, these transitions are gradual and vary by industry. In fact they even vary by degrees within an industry. Semiconductor fabrication, to pick one sector, is a shining example of Industry 4.0., but other parts of the industry, like substrate manufacturing and microelectronics manufacturing, are slightly further behind. 

But what lies beyond Industry 4.0? What is Industry 5.0? The truth is, no one knows for certain. But it is likely to hinge on the intersection of manufacturing and Artificial Intelligence, and is likely to involve a lot less human contact with machines. It is likely to involve machines that self-correct in response to performance – and further, learn from the effects of that correction to improve the very processes they are in charge of executing. It might even involve robots performing maintenance on these machines and fixing hardware when it breaks down.