What on Earth is Industry 4.0?!

It has been a long time since Great Britains Industrial Revolution that started with textile industries and an invention of the simple weaving machine called Flying Shuttle Made by James Kay to maximize the production of cloth. [1]

Nowadays, we have progressed into a more modern society. An era that is likely called an information era, where we can obtain any information just from the tip of your fingers. Today’s society even exceeds Bill Gates vision in 1977 of “a computer on every desk and every home,”[2] It’s more like a computer, a very smart one in everyone’s hand. And fortunately, there is this concept that everyone is talking about: the Internet of Things.

Being able to have more advanced technology as human’s society evolving, the Industrial Internet of things has become one of the most talked about topics or business concepts in recent years.[3] The real question before we dive deeper into the idea of this topic is: “What is the industrial internet?”

One of the largest company in the world, General Electric, uses the name “Industrial Internet” as their term for the industrial internet of things, and others such as Cisco termed it “the internet of everything,” and others called it Internet 4.0.

Figure 1 The Industry 4.0 Elements

The industry 4.0 itself is an industrial system that relies on several key technologies to produce a system more significant than the sum of its parts. [4] (See Figure 1 above) What does it mean? Now, let’s get a little taste of industry 4.0 to give you a bigger picture of this industry.

The alarm rings. As you open your eyes blearily, you see that it’s five minutes later than your usual wake-up time. The clock has checked the train times online, and your train is delayed, so it lets you sleep in a little longer.[5]

In your kitchen, a blinking light reminds you it’s time to take your tablets. If you forget, the medicine bottle cap goes online and emails your doctor to let her know.[6]

As you’ve seen, the internet of things means to connect an object to the internet. This concept means we’re talking about more stuff than the object itself. It’s about how the objects connect to the internet or receive data from the internet and produce useful information for you.

So, imagine this on a bigger scale such as manufacturing company, travel agencies, or even governance! How drastic the changes will be?!


Industry 4.0 in Indonesia

Figure 2 Mass protest about online transportation application in Braga, 2016.

Now, before we talk about Industry 4.0 in Indonesia, we’re going to analyze the strength, weakness, opportunity, and the threat of Industry 4.0.

Strength:
1. More accurate information due to less human intervention
2. A secure monitoring system for human
3. Develop a competitive, yet healthy environment for researching and developing.

Weakness:
1. User’s device or data is prone to a security threat.
2. It is a complex system, and it needs much money to implements/maintain.

Opportunity:
1. Ability to improve specific skills(will be explained further in this writings).
2. Opportunity to Improve the manufacturing efficiency of the industry.

Threat:
1. In a third world country such as Indonesia, implementing Industry 4.0 means less human labor which can result in a low acceptance level from the workers.
2. If the workforce/labor from the country doesn’t meet the requirements needed, then there may be an outsourcing threat.

Indonesia, as a third world country, depends vastly on their infrastructural development and their citizen’s contribution. Industry 4.0, as written in the threat, may have a low acceptance level from the citizen(which most of them are workers) if the citizen is not well educated, generally, or specifically about the industry 4.0 topic. Thus, the problem that needs to be addressed in Indonesia is how well educated their citizen is.

Why is this important? Indonesia, starting from 2020 until 2030 will have a demographic bonus of working age level [7] This means, the education of their citizen must be their top priority or Indonesia will lose their potential working-age citizen due to lack of education.

Fausto Axel Evans Keiluhu
18215025
School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics
Bandung Institute of Technology


Reference

[1] “The Industrial Revolution Begins in England (1760–1850).” Trench Warfare. Accessed August 31, 2018. https://webs.bcp.org/sites/vcleary/modernworldhistorytextbook/industrialrevolution/IRbegins.html.

[2] Dan Bricklin’s Remarks about Bill Gates at the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame event September 16, 2011. Accessed August 31, 2018. http://danbricklin.com/log/billg_entwof.html

[3] Gilchrist, Alasdair. Industry 4.0: The Industrial Internet of Things. New York: Apress, 2016.

[4] McEwen, Adrian, and Hakim Cassimally. Designing the Internet of Things. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley, 2014.

[5]”My Train-Schedule Alarm Clock | Make:.” Make DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers. August 28, 2007. Accessed August 31, 2018. https://makezine.com/2007/08/28/my-train-schedule-alarm-clock/.

[6]”Vitality Glow Cap.” NantHealth. Accessed August 31, 2018. https://www.nanthealth.com/vitality/glowcaps.html.

[7]Jakarta Post. “Demographic Bonus and Ageing: The Mixed Blessing of Family Planning.” The Jakarta Post. July 12, 2017. Accessed August 31, 2018. http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/07/12/demographic-bonus-and-ageing-the-mixed-blessing-of-family-planning.html.

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