Are You Ready For The Fourth Industrial Revolution?

In a new whitepaper, our partners at Zebra Technologies are exploring the current trends surrounding the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ concept.

Industry is an essential part of civilisation. The past 200 years or so have seen the world change unrecognisably, as technology has evolved faster and faster, bringing vast improvements to production, manufacturing and all facets of industry.

So far, there have been three widely recognised industrial revolutions:

1. The first powered by the invention and 18th Century popularisation of the steam engine
2. The second ushered in on the production line, with mass production championed by Henry Ford in the early 1900s
3. Since the turn of the century and the new millennium, we have been experiencing the third industrial revolution: the rapid increase in digital technology has led to the digitisation of the manufacturing industry (in fact, we’ve seen digitisation of almost every industry and part of life)

So, what is the fourth industrial revolution? Connectivity, communication, and collaboration is the theme of the revolution. With online industries booming and the connectedness of the Internet of Things becoming a reality, manufacturing is seeing cohesion across its operations like never before. Innovation is being powered by platforms that combine people, processes, and technologies for more productive and intelligent manufacturing.

Covering just about every industry, the fourth industrial revolution is fast and disruptive. In this new era of production, manufacturers have to be ready and willing to implement new technologies. The workforce is no longer tied to the production line: platforms for industrial innovation are mobile, available anytime, anyplace via devices like handheld computers and smartphones.

The fourth industrial revolution has been labelled the ‘Workforce Mobility Revolution’. Manufacturers need to give their workforce the tools to work innovatively, in order to stay ahead of the game.

Mobilise your workforce

By making your workforce and operations mobile, you are bringing a new level of visibility into your operations. The enterprise mobile devices at the core of the fourth industrial make available more data than ever before, via technology like barcodes, RFID, GPS, and sensors, giving you business-critical information in real-time.

There are three other key opportunities opened up with workforce mobility:

Productivity

Your workflows are sped up when you add enterprise mobile devices to your process. From advanced operating systems to purpose-built software applications, every aspect of the workforce mobility revolution is designed to increase productivity.

Efficiency

By adopting the workforce mobility revolution, every part of your manufacturing system will become more efficient. By implementing processes that eliminate complexity and waste, your whole manufacturing system will be more streamlined.

Accuracy

Errors will be vastly reduced during the fourth industrial revolution. Advanced data collection capabilities mean simple mistakes are practically eliminated, removing both the soft and the hard costs that we associate with error.

Any manufacturer or organisation that fully understands these opportunities, and makes a move to quickly capitalise on them, can look forward to reaping the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution.

Learn more about the workforce mobility revolution, and how you can mobilise your workforce to improve the productivity, efficiency, and accuracy of your operations, download this whitepaper from Zebra, and request more information here.