Industry 5.0. My Uniformed Speculation
As technology advances, new manufacturing paradigms are shifted and new ways of producing goods are created. According to an article on Phill Cartwright, executive chairman of the Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS) in the UK, Industry 4.0 is the current industrial revolution we are in and we are slowly but surely moving into the next big transition in how we automate processes that govern our human world. The topic of Industry 5.0 came up during my last university lecture and I would like to express some uniformed thoughts on what I believe Industry 5.0 will bring about with 5 points.
The internet of everything
Many devices nowadays have the capacity to connect to the internet to share their status or other relevant parameters on demand. But I believe that in the next wave of industrial revolution, even smaller devices will get connectivity hardware to be able to communicate with other surrounding devices. All with the goal of modeling and tracking our world with even more precision.
Automatic manufacturing when the costumer clicks ‘Buy now’
I believe the management of supply chain will slowly lose territory to machines that will decide for themselves what needs to be manufactured and ‘when’ it needs to stock up goods to delivered to customers with optimal efficiency. The customer will get to personalize their purchases even further due to the manufacturing process being optimized and managed by machines rather than humans.
Less ‘Made in China’, More ‘Made Locally’
I speculate a slow but significant shift in geographic location at which the majority of products in the world have been created up until now. As manufacturing processes become simpler, easier and faster, an increase in local manufacturing of goods, where the customers actually live will happen. No need to buy products all the way from China as they will be produced closer to home.
From Manufacturing to Costumer Delivery. Driven by Big Data Every Step of the Way
The accumulation of behavioral data around all aspects of product idea to customer product delivery and satisfaction will become ever so massive. Business strategies will be strongly influenced by patterns recognized in data and other conclusions made while researching the data, especially data coming in from the smallest unimportant devices we use on a daily basis.
Manufacturing Will Become Simpler and More Accessible to the Consumer Market
Complex microchips, electronic circuitry and other hardware that used to be expensive to manufacture will now be governed by open standards and modularity. Anybody at home will be able to create his or her own complex machine to do any particular task. This is already the case, but in Industry 5.0 I suspect that new ventures will arise in which you can, for example, assemble your own smartphone on a website at microchip level and you will have the choice to, either buy it, or buy the components separately.
Those are my 5, truly speculative predictions on how Industry 5.0 will look like.
If you think that I’m pulling this out of my ass you can always send me a message.