Industry 4.0: From Smartphone to Smart Factory

In this series, professionals debate the state – and future – of their industry. Read more here, then write your own #MyIndustry post.

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked out on a stage and began his talk by saying: “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”

Jobs’ business suit was his typical black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. And as he spoke, explaining the product’s features, camera flashes filled the air and he often had to pause for raucous applause.

The new iPhone, Jobs noted, was many things at once: a wide-screen iPod with touch controls; a revolutionary mobile phone; and a breakthrough Internet communications device. Its features, though, were in some ways less interesting than the software behind them. This was the first phone, as Wired magazine would note, “whose software was designed with the user in mind.” In other words, it was the first smartphone that was truly smart — and its introduction has since redefined our experiences as consumers.

Banking, shopping, studying, movies, books, television, travel – our smartphones guide us through all of these experiences. Amazon, Netflix, and Uber all exemplify the way software companies are making our realities as consumers more convenient and efficient. But I can’t help but ask, “What’s next?”

We believe it’s a fourth industrial revolution — or Industry 4.0. Everything you have seen in the consumer and retail space, as a result of the smartphone’s debut, will start to happen in the industrial world.

Next up is smart factories, with high-tech workers using high-tech tools to bring unprecedented speed, efficiency, and flexibility to manufacturing operations.

Computers on the shop floor

Little more than a century ago, Harper’s Weekly weighed in on the need to mass produce cars, predicting that whoever could figure out how to produce a high-quality, affordable vehicle would “not only grow rich but will be considered a public benefactor.”

The one to figure it out, Henry Ford, created an assembly line of 140 workers, with parts added to a Model T chassis as it was pulled with a rope across the floor. Back then, the company offered the Model T in “any color you want, so long as it’s black.”

Today, Ford has partnered with Siemens to develop the software capability that helps engineers simulate the entire assembly process for vehicles at different plants. This has contributed to Ford’s emergence as a leader in designing flexible production that enables mass customization. Its F-150 pickup truck, America’s best-selling vehicle, is built to customers’ specifications in millions of possible configurations involving the body, drivetrain, wheels, accessories, and trim.

Manufacturing jobs are adapting, too. They’re transitioning to design, engineering, and analytics positions as more traditional shop floor roles are being replaced by automated machines and robots. These new tools — like the apps on our smartphones — are driven by major advances in manufacturing software, all while screwdrivers and wrenches are being replaced by iPads.

Today’s digital factories look more like tech companies. You need workers who understand the operating systems behind the machines and robots, who can run software programs that make big data smart, who can design products virtually, and who can interpret data to predict when equipment will fail (then replace a part with 3-D printing).

On the smart factory floor, we need these skills. We need employees with backgrounds in technical training and information technology for jobs such as IT auditors, data analysts, advanced visualization software engineers, and software programmers – jobs that have typically supported new consumer products.

But according to a Business Roundtable survey of CEOs, the jobs of the future are also the ones that companies are having the hardest time filling. Nearly two-thirds of CEOs said their companies were struggling to find qualified applicants for jobs requiring advanced computer and IT skills. Forty-one percent said their companies were having a hard time finding applicants with adequate quantitative knowledge.

It’s easy to take for granted the degree to which economies can change in just one generation. Fifty percent of today’s jobs didn’t exist a generation ago, and 80 percent of the jobs students will fill in the future don’t exist today.

At the same time, if you do not have the right skills currently, you should not be thinking, “I missed my chance.” When Siemens built a gas turbine factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, only a third of the applicants possessed the minimum qualifications we sought. But while some would see this as a skills gap, we saw it as a training gap, and we developed an apprentice program with Central Piedmont Community College to close it.

As a result, there are 1,500 more people working in an increasingly sophisticated, high-tech industry — one, by the way, that’s about to get some big stage treatment typically reserved for new consumer products.

The next big launch

In April, two leaders of the free world — President Obama and German Chancellor Merkel — will attend Hannover Messe in Germany, the largest industrial trade show in the world.

You probably won’t see the President or Chancellor in a black turtleneck holding up a robot. But the leaders will be there to talk about industry 4.0 and smart factories. They’ll talk about what these advances have in store for us, from a new set of jobs to technological innovation to boosting trade. 

The United States and Germany are natural partners in pursuit of Industry 4.0. Germany leads in shop floor control software and the U.S. leads in decision-support software architecture and programming that will integrate the virtual and real worlds of manufacturing. 

So if you’re looking to make your mark in software, you could go to Silicon Valley… but you could also head to Hannover.

Not only will you see more product launches than you could ever imagine. You will see that the shop floor is a training ground to be innovative and make a big impact in any number of fields.

 Our revolutionary smart factories have the potential to change everything.

Photo: The author pictured with Drew Greenblatt, President of Marlin Steel Wire in Baltimore, MD, a great example of advanced technology driving manufacturing in the U.S.