As the first, second and third industrial revolutions shaped our production facilities, the manufacturing industry pioneered the automatic aggregation and smart use of process data, as a means to increase efficiency, address anomalies, while minimizing errors. Modern manufacturing boasts an ever increasing capacity to collect, crunch and make use of gigantic amounts of data – Big Data – to meet client demand, as well as to serve end-users in customized ways at an individual level. As ICT further empowers value chains, the fourth industrial revolution leads to the creation of intelligent, adaptive production environments. In high-end sectors such as automotive and even consumer electronics, the fruits of innovation can already be seen in the production data. Mass customization is here – transforming the way things are made.
Flexibility to offer tailor-made products that seem, or are in fact the unique result of end-user-driven design matters more than the possibility for clients to verify the quality of items available prior to agreeing to purchase them. The customer no longer wants to buy ‘that car’ or ‘that phone’, he wants the manufacturer to deliver ‘his car’ and ‘his phone’, with all the optional features making it not only preferable in his eyes or trendy, but unique and personal. Today, even the giant players’ brand value is immediately exposed to the corrosive effect of social media when the client is not receiving a product in line with expectations. In this context checking product prior to delivery has become secondary.
The modernization of our society looks beyond productivity and profit, pursuing a functionality aimed at creating sustainable wealth and well-being for all its members. Nonetheless, similar trends are to be expected in the way eGovernment services will progressively become the interface to empower citizens with choice, government with information and society with more accurate planning in the allocation of resources at a granular level. Ultimately, even political consensus and stability of governments and administrations will be pursued by gathering data to understand and anticipate trends. At the same time, the fundamental necessities and aspirations of the individual citizen, placed at the center of a sophisticated infrastructure monitoring facts and figures, will be taken into account.
As the economic historian Abbott Payson Usher wrote back in 1929: the limitations of resources are relative to the position of our knowledge and of our technique. The history of electronics and ICT, just as the history of the energy sector is one of constantly advancing knowledge and increased resource availability. To date, it brought us ever more performing, miniaturized and affordable electronics, as well as cheaper energy, beyond forecasts and sometimes against all expectations. US oil output recently rose by almost 800,000 barrels per day, seeing the biggest annual increase since the business began in 1859. Do the perceived limits of available resources thus recede? Definitely – and at rates that are proportionate to the advance in our knowledge.
Similarly, as the digitalization wave further transforms the way governments and citizens interact, and as techniques in addressing end-user demand are refined, progress is to be expected for our entire civilization. The smart fab of the fourth industrial revolution is a good source for inspiration and a field for controlled testing of what intelligent societies can aspire to achieve in the decades to come.
