Innovation and Industry 4.0: A Decade of Change

Welcome to the Industry 4.0 Club's fireside chat. The club's purpose is to engage the power of diverse worldwide talent to accelerate the global evolution to Industry 4.0. We accomplish this by hosting and supporting respectful, thoughtful, and interdisciplinary open conversations and creating quality content on wide-ranging Industry 4.0 topics to expand the reach of our community. My name is Mike Ungar, and I'm the CEO of the Industry 4.0 Club. I have over 40 years of leadership and manufacturing experience most of that with Michelin. I'm joined today by my co-host Mike Yost. Mike is the chairman of the club, and Mike, would you please introduce yourself?

Sure, thank you, Mike. Welcome everybody. As Mike said, my name is Mike Yost. I'm the volunteer chairman of the Industry 4.0 Club, one of the co-founders, and Mike's co-host on these regular sessions. I've been in industry for about 35 years, with the last 15 or so on the industrial nonprofit side of things and primarily interested in helping us drive the discussion and get the viewpoints that Mike talked about. So really excited about our guest here today. We have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Anantha Seshan, the CEO and member of the board at 5G Automatica Limited and also the Chief Innovation Officer at 5G Energy Limited. Our discussion today is going to look at how innovation has impacted Industry 4.0 since its inception. A couple more points about Ananth. He and I have known each other for many years. I hold him in very high regard. His companies, the 5G Group of Companies, specialises in smart manufacturing solutions and has done so for the last 3 decades. They have a customer footprint in over 16 different countries, and he's got a very impressive active collaboration list that I just wanted to touch on here quickly. He's involved in the National Research Council in Canada, the Asian Productivity Organization in Japan, Center for Industry 4.0 in India, SESAME in the United States, and the MESA Africa Working Group to promote Industry 4.0 solutions to small and medium-sized manufacturers. So he's a very busy man. He holds a PhD in robotics from the University of Toronto, has over 35 publications and 3 patents, and he's a very gracious and humble human being to come here and share his knowledge and experience with us. And so Ananth, we welcome you here with us today.

Thank you, Mike. Thank you very much for your very kind words. I don't know I deserve it all, but thank you very much.

So, Ananth, just to get us started, you know, you've spent your career in and around engineering and technology. What motivated you when you were younger to get into this field? Could you talk about that for a moment?

Yeah, I think that probably I should start with some many inspirational moments That were created for me by my parents, my teachers first, I mean, right from primary school, secondary school. I mean, that was the time when the first time in 1969, the Apollo 13 incident occurred. So that was a big sort of mark on— Had a very intelligible mark in my thinking. And then We had a couple of incidents later on in my life. The first one was I came across Isaac Asimov's I, Robot book. That's the first time I came across the term robot, which basically inspired me to sort of work in that area of robotics. And subsequently, when microprocessors came along, I chanced upon a Z80 microprocessor, and I was thrilled to be able to— What is that? write assembly programs that could control servo motors and stepper motors. For the first time in my life, I was writing a program and I could control mechanical systems. So I think those probably were the triggers for me to take on robotics. I was fascinated by robotics because of probably right from the astronauts of 1969 to Later on, the stories that Isaac Asimov wrote about robots and the 3 Laws of Robotics, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. So as we talk about Industry 4.0, Ananth, what do you think are some of the most pivotal technologies that you see having an impact in this domain?

We all know this. Actually, we were together when these things happened. At the turn of the century, Mike, we had this internet, and wireless and mobile boom, right? The 3 major technologies emerged at the turn of the century. And then in parallel, we also had solid-state devices helping in storage. And also the performance was— computational performance was improved by the processors, multicore processors. So In my opinion, the internet and wireless technologies, and of course mobile as well, helped in the industrial Internet of Things emerging as a major technology for Industry 4. And then added to that, the memory capability, storage capability, and the processing capability helped in real-time computing, edge computing, and even later on AI. AI in itself saw an explosion in 2010. That also helped us more because manufacturers are able to make predictive decisions. So in my opinion, these are the foundational technologies that impacted Industry 4.0. I hope you agree with that. But basically, the fundamental foundational technologies were probably evolving in the first part of the—

Sure. So you touched on edge and edge computing. I think you touched on edge computing, you touched on AI, you touched on the ability for storage. What impact do you think that, I guess, this ability to store— I guess storage and cloud are the same in your mind, probably, right? And then you mentioned— did you mention digital twins, I think, as well, didn't you?

Yes.

Yeah, so these are all very important technologies. And they really all have advanced. I think the other thing that strikes me is, of course, the sensor, the ability for sensors to easily be now low cost and lots of different ways to gather data that we didn't necessarily have a decade ago.

That's exactly the reason why we have that is because of the internet and wireless revolution, right? And that's the reason why we have IIoT. being so successful today. The sensors are equipped with the capability to communicate via the internet, as well as now we have several standards protocols. Now it's possible to implement in these sensors because of the computational power and the need for— and the cost of storage being so low, and the possibility for edge computers to communicate with them and get the data from the sensors very easily. So I think that If you go back to the foundation, my opinion would be that internet and wireless come first. They are the major reasons why we are where we are today. And of course, mobile technology, which is helping us use tablets and communicate again. So these 3 technologies, along with the storage capacity and processing, they are the foundational technologies that has made Industry 4.0 a success.

If I could just chime in with that. Anantha and I go way back together, as I mentioned. When I was at MESA International, and we're both lifetime members of MESA, and I always tell everybody the one topic that never got covered at MESA was cloud because everything came from the membership. The membership would prioritize where we're going and there'd be input from the board and strategic things. But there was this feeling early on that, oh, the cloud will never work in manufacturing. And then the next day, seemingly, it was, oh, everybody's using the cloud. And it was just really dramatic and striking to me 'cause I was watching the conversations and anticipating that we would end up with working groups focused on understanding the cloud and all those sorts of things. And at first, People were very hesitant, and then they were completely accepting. So I think that kind of connectivity and such that you point to, Ananth, it was just amazing to me the speed with which that made things we wanted to do for a long time still in sight of what we wanted to do, but now potentially able to do it in an easier way.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we started when we were we were starting our careers, it was cell-based automation. And then it expanded to probably plant-wide automation. Then they started talking about enterprise-wide automation. But then these were all silos. And then they talked about integrating the plant and the enterprise. And that's where the internet technology, the wireless technology started kicking in. And then we had the cloud, which is totally another location where the data center will be located somewhere else, but the data will be stored there. So all of these evolutions that are happening were all happening because the background, I think there was a big revolution with internet and mobile and storage and processing and wireless and so on. Happened in the '90s, but we're starting to be applied in industry in the first decade of this century.

You know, it's interesting that we talk about the cloud and wireless. The only— the other thing that comes to my mind that's really caught up and now is essential, right, is cybersecurity to go along with that to ensure that what we're doing is safe. Have you seen the same thing where that seems to— we know it was a very— talked about an awful lot a few years ago, a couple of years ago, and now we don't hear about it as much. I think because the— my sense is it's actually now technology-wise caught up quite nicely. And it's really quite now, I will say, complementing the Industry 4.0 evolution.

Absolutely right, right, Mike. The cybersecurity aspect was probably not given much importance the first 3 or 4 years, I would say, but the later— not to say the last decade, but after 2015, there was a, a lot of drive, uh, amongst manufacturers to ensure that the systems, the solution software that they are employing— because the number of implementations of Industry 4 started becoming, uh, started reaching a critical mass during the second half of the last decade, right? Until then, it was just some clusters, not many, many use cases. But then by 2015, we had a good understanding of Industry 4, and many companies started implementing. So when that started happening, it was— there was a realization that we are buying sensors, we are buying software, we are buying from different vendors. And how do we ensure— and we are going to be connecting all of them through the internet— how are we going to ensure that the, the, the, the, the machines and the, the organization is going to be secure from any intrusions? So then there was— there were many I mean, each government, I would think most of the governments in the manufacturing economies which are working on smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0, they started looking at this problem by setting up institutes to look at cybersecurity. And in North America, we have CIMANI, which is a very well-established institute for cybersecurity for manufacturing. They have come up with a fantastic architecture. Which is a standard now for implementation by manufacturers. May not be yet a standard for the small and medium, working on that. But as you rightly said, today there is some maturity achieved in this area. Only whitelisted websites are allowed to communicate. There are so many rules now governing the exchange of data between an external source and the organization. When suppliers engage with customers, there are checks and balances for the data to be exchanged in a secure manner. Today, I think that we can safely say the area of cybersecurity is addressed well. But as you know, it is a journey. We cannot be resting on our laurels saying, okay, it's all done. The hackers are becoming more and more intelligent. The technology they are using is all top-notch and latest Sure. There is always a need for us to be very vigilant. But other than that, I think that you're right. Basically, we have caught up to the need of the hour, at least with respect to cybersecurity.

Well, thank you for that. I just want to remind everybody that we are talking with Dr. Ananth Seshan, the chairman of the 5G Group of Companies, about industries that are impacting Industry 4.0. And Ananth, I just wanted to go back to, well, a couple of things. First of all, we've been talking for about 15 minutes, and Mike and I don't ever like to talk about technology without talking about business value. So I think you've gone longer on this episode than we've ever allowed anybody to go with a technology focus. And quite honestly, I mean, for everybody to understand, Anant's one of the people that taught me that the technology underwrites or supports the the business outcomes that people are looking for. So I know you get it, but can we switch the conversation a bit towards the technology connected to business value where you see the biggest, whether it's the biggest value impact or the easiest to recognize, but help us make that connection back to the business value with these technologies we're discussing.

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, I always start with the business value. Basically, there has to be a reason why somebody wants to change. I mean, basically, there's a status quo and there's a— we need to change. There's a need for a change because the world is changing, the customers are changing, there's a need for adaptation. So today, you can't rely on rigid production systems that were designed for probably, you know, mass production of the same product, the same type of product in mass. But today we are having customers who are— who want personalized products. So we may need to have modular, reconfigurable, flexible production systems which will meet the demand of each and every customer. So we may have to manufacture for a volume of 1. So every customer, we may need to produce a separate product, a different product. Now, when you produce that product, we need to produce it most efficient way, the most effective way. The quality should be high. Our machines should be in good health condition. So we have all of these constraints also playing along. So you have the market changing. You have the regular operational efficiencies and operational excellence as a mandate. So how do we do that? And therefore, I mean, for doing that, we need to be able to think out of the box and think about— and each manufacturer will have their own, you know, dream of what they want to achieve with their business 5 years down the road, 3 years down the road. And then they have their current problems, today's firefighting problems. I'm having pain points today.

Mm-hmm.

So you're not going to be just looking at your pain points of today. You're not just going to look at the crystal ball and say 5 years. You have to have a balance between the two and say, OK, what needs to be done in my factory to be able to transform from this rigid production system or rigid sort of status quo to a more flexible smart manufacturing Industry 4.0-based implementation. In that, I normally look at 4 different steps. The first step is to create a smart business process. Evaluate your business process today and look at where there are inefficiencies, where are the gaps, what kind of innovations can help in addressing those pain points and gaps. So smart business process is the first thinking that one has to do. How can I make my process smarter with the, the idea of improving the business status quo and a strategy of achieving a certain mandate in 3 to 5 years? So it's to be a long-term goal, but It can be started small. That's the first thing. Smart business process. How can I make my business process smarter? Then you look at what solutions you need for implementing that business process. That's the second step. You don't think about the technology or solution. You just look at this business process first. Look at the business process that needs to be changed, and then the solutions that can provide you that change. The solutions then will you will start thinking about what functionality you would need today in these solutions to help in implementing the business process that you have conceived that would change the status quo. Then comes the technology. The 3rd step is technology. What technologies are needed for enabling the solutions? There's a difference between solutions and technology. Solutions, still you are in the domain space. You're still looking at how I can improve productivity, am I going to improve efficiency? How am I going to improve quality? Whereas technology is enabling those changes, allowing one to implement certain techniques or use certain technologies like wireless internet and so on to be able to achieve that efficiency and effectiveness and quality. The 3rd step is what technologies are required to enable the solution. The last but not least, is how do I empower the human being, the humans, whether it is the foreman, whether it's the supervisor, whether it's a manager, how am I going to empower them to become better, be able to perform better? These 4 aspects, I would say 4 dimensions, determine the transformation. It is right from business to technology to humans. And that's what—

that's great. So yeah, so that's great. So what you're really saying, I mean, we've been talking technology, but you start with the business problem or the business challenge before you go anywhere close to the technology. So yeah, that's a lot of sense.

Absolutely. And right now, you need to improve capacity, you want to improve capability, what do you do? And basically, if you start putting on a thinking hat on, you'll come up with some ideas. Those are your changes that you might want to deploy in your business process. From there, you go on to solutions, technology, and then ensure that all of these changes are experienced by the human being who's going to interact with this. That is what I call as the empowered human.

Well, it's interesting too with that because I was thinking, Ananth, as you were talking about that, that we've been on this ride together for a long time. I think that a lot of— it seems to me that there has been a switch that has Flip, um, that people are more accepting. People get what you're saying more now than, than I think they did in the past, which, which is good. Um, but, um, the, uh, the people— I think one of the really interesting things, especially when you talk about mobile and wireless and internet and such and empowering the people, well, people are more, uh, tech savvy and tech enabled and such nowadays than they were, you know, probably an hour ago, but certainly a decade ago and, you know, 2 decades ago. So really, this idea that as an industry we don't know how to empower our people with digital tools, it really, I think, starts to get much more glaring because the fact that people expect their lives to be connected And I think it comes right back to the beginning of the point that you raised about the technologies that have sort of unlocked where we are today with Industry 4.0.

Absolutely. In day-to-day life, we use WhatsApp, we use Twitter, we use Instagram. I mean, all of these applications today, all from your mobile phone. It's all sort of very commonplace now. And also you find that the next generation is very tech-savvy. They are sort of— even a newborn can skip between videos so easily. I'm talking from personal experience. I'm a grandfather now. My grandkid is able to do that so simply. We are sort of getting to a stage where training people on digital technology is going to be progressively easier. But we do have to also consider the workforce that is there today.

Yes.

The people in the 40s and mid-40s, midlife, they have to be trained. If you were to ask me what is the most important challenge of the future, I would say it'll be workforce development, workforce skill development the next 2 decades. Basically, after the 2 decades, probably everybody that is going to come into the manufacturing workforce would be totally different. The landscape would be different. They'll be sort of more tuned to the digital technology and digital way of doing things. But at this moment, for the next 20 years, we still have a lot of work to do to train the workforce to be able to cope with these changes, especially those who are doing repetitive tasks, They are going to become extinct soon. So my opinion is, for the next 20 years, the extent to which we are able to— globally, in every manufacturing economy, the greatest challenge is going to be in the manufacturing sector. The greatest challenge is going to be to skill or reskill the workforce to be able to cope with the changes that are happening. the manufacturing industry.

That's a great point. I mean, I think that's something that we've talked about, even though our conversation today focuses on innovations for Industry 4.0. It also comes back to people, doesn't it, at the end? Isn't that what you're alluding to there?

Yes, in my opinion, it always goes back to the people. I mean, whatever innovation you're going to do, it's finally— it is the people who are going to experience it, who are going to be managing it, who are going to benefit from it. So I would always center that on the people and the process and then the technology and solutions. So I would think that this should be, at least in my opinion, the priority that we should take.

Yeah. You know, but I wanted to kind of come back to something that's interesting because, you know, I'm sure you do. I know I talk to a lot of small and mid-sized mites. as well as manufacturers. And, you know, a lot of these folks haven't started very much yet. Others have gotten on the journey, but we see that technology is evolving quickly, or more quickly and quickly. And we talk about upskilling the workforce. How does someone who doesn't have the resources of a very large company keep up with all this, you know, whether that's making sure their workforce is ready or, or understanding what's— what the possible solutions are? What are your thoughts or what are your suggestions for manufacturers?

I'm going to share just a couple of examples of what large companies are doing. Maybe you may have other examples as well. Today, the companies are running basically training centers helped by trainers who are trained by domain experts, or domain experts after retirement, they come and train the trainers, and the trainers are basically employees of these large companies. They run training centers in their own premises or in collaboration with academia. The academia and the industry, There are a couple of— and of course the government in many, many instances are collaborating to build these training institutes. A good example is, of course, in the US, SESAME is doing a lot of work in workforce development, and they are working with industry, they are working with— they are a government organization, they are working with experts But they don't— they are conducting training programs, workshops, and training the trainers. The trainers go and then they train the industry. It is not enough. That's a trickle today in the volume we have is tremendous and we need to scale that. We need to have many mushrooming centers of excellence training the workforce in every geography. And the governments in every manufacturing economy, basically any government which wants their manufacturing to be a certain percentage of their GDP, a significant percentage of GDP, will have to establish these workforce development centers. in conjunction with universities, in conjunction with other technical institutes and research centers to develop the workforce at scale. The industries are trying their part, from their part, trying to establish their own training centers, but they are very local to their business. But I think that a broader view from the government, from the academic institutes, and a collaboration between them along with industry might help.

Well, and I would just come alongside that, Mike. I mean, to your point, and ground it back in something that Anant said earlier. To me, I think we may actually be getting some help by the speed with which the technologies are evolving, right? Because, you know, personally, throughout my career, I thought there were times when we were ahead of the technology that, that, you know, we could see what was around the corner and we could, we could take people with us. And the speed with which technology is growing has just completely outpaced anything that as an industry we can keep up with. And so I think in the end, you look at it and say, all right, well, I'm giving up on the idea of keeping up with or catching up with technology. So what do I do? And you go back to the point said earlier about his 4 stages of you know, focusing on the people and the processes and supporting technologies appropriately. So maybe we're actually lucky that things are going so fast.

That's great. No, thank you guys. So we've got just one more thought I wanted to ask you about before we wrap up. So I know you're, you're very much at the forefront of the technology side. Sorry for going back to that again. But I wanted to tap into your expertise if you don't mind. I want you to put your crystal ball on the table. From your perspective, what's on the horizon? What should folks be looking forward to from a technology perspective to help them solve their problems that perhaps is just now percolating out there in the world?

I would say the current trajectory is probably taking us towards Hyper-personalized manufacturing, autonomous factories, and then I'm also hearing a lot of circular manufacturing. These 3 evolutions are probably— we are able to visualize that in the horizon. I mean, there will be others that I might have missed, Mike, or both of you can probably pick it up.

Mm-hmm.

But these 3 are apparent to me as 3 important areas that are going to evolve in the next probably decade or so. And again, I go back, when these, uh, and when this evolution is going to happen, so it's a hyper-personalized manufacturing and autonomous factories, you're going to have a hit on the labor force. And so going back to our previous discussion, right, we need to focus on the workforce now. It is going to be the toughest challenge. I know that we want to talk about technology, but we're actually focusing on the impact of technology in the future because the technology, as Mike was saying, is advancing rapidly. Today with GenAI, we are talking about literally people using that for everything today. And manufacturing is going to be following the same suit. It's going to be doing the same thing. And therefore, we need to find jobs. I mean, the new jobs are going to be associated with problem-solving skills, with management skills, multidisciplinary skills. We don't even have teachers for teaching those. So it is a— if you look at what we need to address, the root, we have to go back to the curriculum today, look at how, if we have to develop skills for the next generation manufacturers, labor, manufacturing labor, we need to relook at what we are going to teach them. At the undergrad level, I don't think these silos of mechanical, electrical, civil, computer science, they are no longer valid. We are going to have a mix of all of those in some credit system.

Definitely.

We have to think of having a multidisciplinary engineering program. Think out of the box there and create, and there should be a lot of management in it. There should be a lot of problem-solving skills in it.

Yes.

That skill set we need for the next generation and managing automation systems. In short, what I think is if you have to look at the crystal ball, the technology side, it's okay, we know where it's going, but are we prepared for it from a labor force perspective? is a question that's something that we need to answer.

Very good. Well, we've been talking with Anant Sesham for the last 35 minutes or so. As we wrap up, maybe Mike, a final thought from you, and then Anant, we'll hear a final thought from you, and then we'll wrap up. Mike, you want to start us off?

Yeah. Thank you, Anant, for sharing your experience. Lots of things, you know, but I think probably the big takeaway for me is that sort of how technology is ingrained in us in all aspects of life and that, and, you know, the challenge ahead for us is to really focus on, you know, the workers. And I think also there's opportunity for the workers to share in the growth and opportunity that's ahead of us, you know, with creating this future state. So, you know, really, I think it's important for people to understand the points that Anant stressed about the value of the people in this current state and future state of where we're going with manufacturing.

Thanks, Mike. Anant?

Thank you very much for the opportunity. And if you are a manufacturer, still sitting on the fence thinking whether I should jump or not into this Industry 4.0 thing, I would say please do so immediately because you're already late. And, and, and, you know, this is, it's very much a need now. It is a must-have, not a nice-to-have anymore because the landscape is changing. If you've already tried some Industry 4.0 technology did not work for you, please do a self-introspection on why it did not work. It's probably not the fault of Industry 4.0. It could be that you might not have implemented or deployed that the right way. There are so many vendor-agnostic organizations or people who could help you. Sesame and Mesa International come to my mind immediately. Please engage with them and, and to understand a systematic way of implementing Industry 4.0. And finally, a manufacturer who has already implemented and found success, congratulations to you. But then, you know, the world is changing constantly. This is a journey, so keep at it. Please continuously keep changing, keep adapting as the world is changing. And that would be my—

Thank you.

my simple advice. And thank you very much, gentlemen, for, for, for, for your— for this opportunity.

Well, thank you. And yeah, thank you enough for, for joining us as well and for giving us your insights, you know, on innovation, Industry 4.0, and of course leading us back to the impact that people have, uh, and, and where it really is centered on this discussion, back on people. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

So the Industry 4.0 Club, we'd like to encourage you to take action. I mean, the importance is, as Anant mentioned, So take some action, advance the deployment of Industry 4.0, read an article, attend a workshop, develop a roadmap, smart manufacturing roadmap for your plant or company, or challenge your company to take that action. We'd like to know what you're doing. We'd like to hear from you. So please drop us a note on our webpage at www.industry40club.com or at our LinkedIn page. We also host these conversations weekly. And if you'd like to join us on a future discussion, we'd love to hear from you as well. And perhaps we can get you on a broadcast. So with that, again, another thank you, Mike. Thank you. We wish you all a wonderful rest of the day and a good rest of the week.

Thanks. Thank you.