Industry 7.0

The 4th Industrial Revolution was announced at a trade fair, which is uniquely different from the prior three revolutions, which were named after real bursts of productivity.

The 4th Industrial Revolution was announced at a trade fair, which is uniquely different from the prior three revolutions, which were named after real bursts of productivity.

While the notion of the 4th Industrial Revolution encompasses all industries, the term “Industry 4.0“ generally refers to its manufacturing leg.

Interestingly, since 2010, the manufacturing industry productivity has been stagnant and even slightly declining in all major economies such as the USA, Germany, China, etc. So, there is no empirical burst of productivity boost despite the 12 years since the term 4th indusrial revolution was coined. Obviously, there is a gap between the hype and the reality. Also, almost one-third of the world economy is still below the norms of the 2nd industrial Revolution.

Even more interestingly, there is a proliferation of point-zeros in an accelerated manner, such as “Industry 5.0” and “Industry 6.0”. As of late April 2023, on Linkedin, there are almost 1000 people with the title containing the word “Industry 5.0“, another 10 people with a title containing “Industry 6.0“ and a few people with the title “Industry 7.0“.

The diminishing value of these additional point-zeros reminds me of the competition among the razor blade manufacturers, which increased the number of blades from 1 to 7 with questionable improvements. In a similar way, philosophers of industry X.0s are splitting hair with the nuances to justify their next point-zero concepts.

Here is a good blog post about what industry 4.0 actually is

Now we should spend some time on Industry 5.0. In an article published in the Journal of Cloud Computing, Industry 5.0 is defined exactly as what Industry 4.0 is, with a nudge of demoting Industry 4.0 towards a simple digitization act, which is an outright misunderstanding of what Industry 4.0 is. Similarly, European Union defines Industry 5.0 as a “complement to the existing Industry 4.0 approach by specifically putting research and innovation at the service of the transition to a sustainable, human-centric, and resilient European industry.” But another European Union paper describes Industry 4.0 as sustainable, human-centric, and resilient as well. This whole information pollution is now leading to discussions of little value, such as whether Industry 4.0 and 5.0 can coexist.

Finally, in my article in ISE magazine in 2020, I predicted the evolving priorities of Industry 4.0. Because Industry 4.0 is a technology-enabled strategy and since it is a strategy its priorities can change over time. There is no need to increment the point-zero every time priorities change. But the ease of incrementing point-zeros overshadows real questions such as the trade-offs among priorities, how much the trade-off curve has been pushed with technological progress, and how well Industry 4.0 disseminates and creates value for societies.

©Saip Eren Yilmaz, 2023