The next stage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has two main protagonists: the collaborative paradigm and predictive analysis driven by artificial intelligence
Industry 4.0 contemplates intelligent production ecosystems, designed and programmed based on the management of large volumes of information. The objective is to allow them to better detect, predict and interact with the physical world, in order to make decisions that support and optimize production in real time. With this focus, the great challenge for companies is how to capture, organize and manage data more quickly and effectively.
If we put the magnifying glass on production, it all comes down to supply chain management. Being able to achieve 4.0 standards means focusing there, from data capture to systems integration, through the analysis and organization of all that information, seeking to detect patterns, creating simulated scenarios and predicting future scenarios.
In this sense, the challenge is collaboration with all actors participating in the chain: I am referring to real-time data flows that can be managed and integrated into daily workflows and systems.
This is why the future of Industry 4.0 undoubtedly has to do with raising the bar of collaboration. According to Francisco Betti, director of the “Advanced Manufacturing and Production” platform of the World Economic Forum (WEF), having a fully connected value chain is vital for the higher stages of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “It is not just about digitizing your own facilities, but about incorporating your suppliers on that path. This makes it possible to boost productivity, efficiency and growth, but also enable new business models,” he points out.
A future marked by AI
Industry 4.0 is nourished by technologies such as the cloud, Big Data, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), all of them capable of working together in an interconnected ecosystem: IoT devices and sensors capture and share data that is stored and organized in the cloud, where analytics and AI can be applied to optimize business decisions.
Increasingly in the times to come, collaboration will have Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a key partner. In a world of complexity and risk, as big data grows ever larger, companies will increasingly be using AI to accelerate the path of digitalization. In Spain and according to IDC Research, it is a technology that will grow one 27% per year until 2025.
In the future of Industry 4.0, AI-powered predictive and prescriptive analytics will play an increasingly important role. From “what is happening now” to diagnosing “what will happen next” and “what should happen next.”
If we talk about the supply chain, this involves synthesizing large data sets and thousands of variables to predict demand, synchronize production and optimize decisions related to procurement and logistics. What is the future vision? That AI can produce instant responses and make autonomous decisions that optimize supply chain performance.
An important point to highlight is that if we are proposing a step beyond mere data segmentation and think of an interconnected, intelligent and autonomous system throughout the supply chain, this implies leaving aside the competitive mentality: as I said at the beginning , in the future of data management 4.0, collaboration with all actors in the ecosystem is the way to go.
Industry 4.0 is defined by technology, but the goal is to improve human activities, so its future has everything to do with how relationships and the commitment of all parties are intertwined to respond in the most effective way to challenges. of the context.
