
Technology, however, is only half of the Industry 4.0 equation.

Industry 4.0 brings these inventions beyond the previous realm of possibility with four foundational types of disruptive technologies (examples below) that can be applied all along the value chain:

Seventy percent said their companies were already piloting or deploying new technology.ĤIR builds on the inventions of the Third Industrial Revolution-or digital revolution-which unfolded from the 1950s and to the early 2000s and brought us computers, other kinds of electronics, the Internet, and much more.

Steam propelled the original Industrial Revolution electricity powered the second preliminary automation and machinery engineered the third and cyberphysical systems-or intelligent computers-are shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution.īefore 2014, the Google search term “Industry 4.0” was practically nonexistent, but by 2019, 68 percent of respondents to a McKinsey global survey regarded Industry 4.0 as a top strategic priority.
