I had a good laugh at this article (HERE) about how Britain can lead the fourth industrial revolution by Juergen Maier the CEO of Siemens UK. Mr Maier , along with 200 other CEOs, has helped to write a report called Made Smarter UK which is being sent to the Business Secretary to guide the government's future industrial policy.
For those who don't know, the fourth industrial revolution, sometimes known as Industry 4.0, is the name for the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies to create what has been called a "smart factory". Over the so-called Internet of Things, physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real time, to record and analyse data to optimise equipment use and so improve productivity as well as reliability and maintenance procedures.
Being the fourth means it comes behind the original steam powered industrial revolution that we started here in Britain, followed by the mass production systems introduced by Henry Ford and others in the early part of the last century, and then the computer and automation systems that have been developed over the last fifty years or so. Industry 4.0 is the logical next step, harnessing cloud computing power with analytical systems to drive productivity even further.
Notwithstanding that Industry 4.0 was a German government initiative launched in 2011 and that other European countries like Italy for example are already offering tax incentives for business to adopt these advanced manufacturing techniques, the article seems to suggest we can somehow "lead" the revolution. Our record in robot installation is absolutely lamentable (HERE) so this is in my opinion an impossible task.
Although CEO of Siemens UK, Mr Maier just doesn't realise how far behind we are. And as for the other CEOs I am quite sure hardly any of them will understand how their own businesses actually work and even less of an idea about their competitors in Europe. Maier was on Radio 4 this morning talking about the report and saying the UK needs to "upskill" one million people over the next ten years and he wants the government to begin investing to bring this about. Every government has attempted something like it since the 1950s so good luck with that one!
