Wind River CTO: How to cross the gap of Industry 4.0

Author: Paul Miller, CTO of Wind River

Geoffrey Moore’s seminal book on the migration of technology usage from early adopters to mainstream, Crossing the Chasm (1991), is widely considered “the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to the larger market”. The book provides a perfect framework for understanding the moment we are about to face with Industry 4.0. For those of you who are not familiar with the technology, we are talking about the moment when the usage of a technology or product shifts from early adopters who are initially interested in the technology to early adopters who are interested in it because it is novelty, to people who are interested in it simply because they are interested in the new technology and can see the tangible benefits.

Some 30 years after the first edition of this book was published, it is clear that we are on the verge of seeing “crossing the chasm” with Industry 4.0, thanks to five factors.

Factor 1: The arrival of 5G

It’s important to note that 5G is not “just another G.” Historically, factory automation has tended to be fixed, connected via cables. A step in the right direction for autonomy was 4G connectivity, but its fundamental bandwidth and latency issues prevented it from being a viable solution.

As Verizon’s Srini Kalapala said in a recent interview, “[In previous generations] the technology was focused on a single vector, delivering more data or delivering voice across the country with better quality voice. But when you look at 5G, instead of thinking about a single vector of delivery, we’re actually thinking about delivery across multiple vectors. That’s high throughput, lower latency, better security, and higher reliability. All of those things can be delivered on demand in a matter of minutes. Now, to do that requires us to rethink the way we build our networks and really make that shift.”

Kalapala discussed how 5G millimeter wave technology “will allow us to deliver gigabytes of bandwidth to a single user.” Imagine gigabytes of data (roughly 10 times more than is available today) wirelessly streaming to a single device with ultra-low latency security and reliability. Applying these ideas to the factory floor, 5G will be a game changer, allowing robots to not only automate but unplug and run autonomously. This will allow the creation of smart factories with a level of flexibility previously only considered in science fiction.

Factor 2: Covid-19

Covid-19 has been a technology accelerator. In our Covid-19 Industry Impact Survey, launched in mid-2020, we found that Covid-19 has rapidly driven the deployment of 5G communications in all countries.

We then compared investments between the groups. Using 100 as an index for survival mode, we found that companies are focusing on transforming investments in these areas at the following rates: 5G as an accelerator (179), container-based development (173), digital transformation initiatives (159), artificial intelligence (134), cloud-native application development (133), and IoT development (122). Honestly, everyone went into survival mode last year. The real difference is in the outlook for the future. Surviving 2020 is one thing. Surviving and thriving will require investment.

Factor 3: A New World Approach That Requires Crossing the Chasm

The global Industry 4.0 market is expected to reach $267.01 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 16.3% during the forecast period of 2019 to 2026. Manufacturing industry leaders who make these investments by adopting new technologies have high expectations. European manufacturers noted that adopting new technologies has increased their customer satisfaction, internal confidence, competitive advantage, and profit margins by 50% or more. To achieve these gains, in order to prioritize the use of these technologies, 50% of respondents expect to adopt 5G this year and 81% of respondents will adopt these technologies within three years: analytics, artificial intelligence, autonomous collaborative robots, machine equipment diagnostics, cloud computing/cloud-native applications, cloud-to-edge PaaS, industrial automation, machine learning, digital twins, edge computing. These technologies require the advantage of intelligence to be effective.

Element 4: Adaptive, smart manufacturing, amplified by the power of the intelligent edge

Gartner predicts that by 2023, more than 50% of enterprise-generated data will be created and processed at the edge. Industry 4.0 and 5G are the primary drivers of this statistic. This shift is happening in part because it’s much cheaper to process data close to the source since it avoids backhaul costs, but a key part of its value is that the power of data is always there, often at the moment it’s created, computed, or sensed. For example, 5G Edge can help a manufacturing plant dealing in heat-sensitive materials wirelessly monitor and adjust as needed throughout a production line to ensure optimal production, sounding alerts and making adjustments to avoid costly failures.

Smart Edge is the nexus of Industry 4.0 and 5G – processing that will leverage everything that 5G connectivity brings to the table to enable Industry 4.0 technologies to achieve our goals.

Factor 5: Generational expectations from baby boomers to Zoomers

The last factor has to do with where we are in the demographic shift in technology. Pew Research determined in 2016 that millennials have become the largest generation in the workforce. Most millennials don’t remember a time without mobile phones or internet access. Their expectations are different. Consider how common it is to conduct a transaction on a mobile phone in a few minutes that previously might have taken days or months using mail, phone, or an in-person visit. As this generation, and every other generation, becomes more accustomed to convenience and personalization in their personal lives, they will also gain this expectation in their work lives. The ability to adapt and personalize to meet customer needs will undoubtedly be a success factor in the future, and pre-Industry 4.0 processes simply could not figure it out on their own.

Moore’s book was meant to be a model that contained strategies driven by a company or entity to bring a new product to market. In this article, we discuss the true crossing of the chasm driven by the intelligent edge, a convergence of multiple products and technologies. As the concept of the intelligent edge and its actual infrastructure become more popular, it will grow and spread at an exponential rate, making the time to build intelligent systems at the edge now.