Are we already facing the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

According to many economists, we have been immersed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution for a few years now. Each of these revolutions has been based on the development of a disruptive technology and has created a new socio-economic ecosystem, better than the previous one.

The great industrial revolutions have been:

1. First Industrial Revolution (from 1750 to 1850) based on mechanization and the steam engine.
2. Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1914) based on mass production, the production line and electricity.
3. Third Industrial Revolution (from 1945 to today) based on automation and computers
4. Fourth Industrial Revolution (today) whose disruption is based on the interaction of physical and cybernetic systems such as intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things or robotics.

Right now we are living a transitional stage between the Third and Fourth Revolutions. We are in a process of evolution where industrial systems are super-optimised in terms of production and market costs, but with significant deficiencies in information management systems that make them vulnerable to take the next step.

As in any transition period in history, there are already players who are in the next stage and have a position of market supremacy. This is the case of technology companies such as Google, Amazon or Facebook (which are leading the new industrial revolution) which must be controlled through regulation to avoid monopoly positions. According to the FTF experts,work must be done on the following aspects to accelerate the transition to the new revolution:

• Improve the industry’s information systems, making them strong against possible cyberattacks.
• Create relevant information systems that support development and detect manufacturing errors .
• Balancing production cost optimization and adapting to new technology.

This Fourth Industrial Revolution is a global revolution and it will affect, as previous industrial revolutions did, our way of working and the destruction or creation of jobs. But it is an unstoppable revolution.

You can find out what new business models technology will bring in the report on our website.