Fernando Alcoforado *
Throughout history, there have been four industrial revolutions. The first industrial revolution was boosted by the invention of steam engines and railroad construction, inaugurating the era of mechanized production. The second industrial revolution made mass production possible, thanks to the advent of electricity and production lines. The third industrial revolution was catalyzed by the development of semiconductors, mainframes and personal computers, as well as the internet. Today, we are living the fourth industrial revolution that involves intelligent machines simultaneously with waves of advances in many areas, ranging from genetic sequencing to nanotechnology.
- The 1st, 2nd and 3rd Industrial Revolution
1st Industrial Revolution
The First Industrial Revolution occurred in 1780 in England when steam engines were upgraded so that they could be introduced into the manufacturing processes of the textile, steel and metallurgical industries, with coal as their source of energy. The First Industrial Revolution is called the “era of coal and iron.” Although it has caused changes not only in industry but also in agriculture, livestock, trade, etc., the most profound changes brought about by the First Industrial Revolution were in the means of production. Mechanical practice has been introduced, with steam and coal machines, wage labor, society has ceased to be rural to be urban. Technological innovations in England have contributed to increased productivity. There were a number of technological innovations at the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution, among them the mechanical loom, the hydraulic frame, the hybrid spinning machine, the steam engine, the the steamboat, the locomotive, etc. all these inventions caused revolutions in the mode of production.
2nd Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution occurred almost a century later in 1870 in several countries in Europe, Asia, and the United States, when steel, electric motors, and petroleum-derived fuels began to increase the mass production processes of automobile industries, chemical, petroleum, among others. The Second Industrial Revolution was known as the “era of steel and electricity”. Among the inventions that emerged at that time were Bessemer’s process of transforming iron into steel, which allowed the production of large-scale steel, the dynamo, which allowed the substitution of steam for electricity and the internal combustion engine which allowed the use of oil on a large scale, creating conditions for the invention of the automobile and the airplane.. The inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution were the major technological resources used by Henry Ford to develop the production system known as Fordism. Based on the technological advances of the Second Industrial Revolution and in the middle of work management called Taylorism, Fordism was the process of obtaining and capital accumulation in force in the world until the 1970s. Fordism aims at large-scale production, which requires consumption on a large scale as well. Then came the standardized (standardized) production. Taylorism emerged in the early twentieth century, created by Frederick W. Taylor and was a form of business management, not a new form of production. His goal was to make the worker more productive.
3rd Industrial Revolution
The Third Industrial Revolution came a century after the Second Industrial Revolution in Japan and the United States almost 50 years ago in 1970 when, with the advancement of electronics and computerized and robotic systems, the production lines of the microelectronics industries , computer science, among others, began to be automated. The Third Industrial Revolution resulted from the crisis of Fordism that happened through the increase in unemployment, the fall in investment levels and the fiscal crisis of the state, giving rise to a new pattern of accumulation of capital and organization of production, a pattern that is being called by the scholars of Toyotism through which there is almost no waste, because only the necessary is produced, the production is faster and with more quality and there is a need for less manpower, since almost all the machinery is automatic, robotized. The Toyotism began to be implanted in 1962 by the Toyota in Japan and has as main characteristic and objective the production only of the necessary and in the shortest time. It is the just-in-time that is a flexible system of production, because it works with more individualized consumption requirements.
The Toyotism needs an agile worker who knows how to work with several machines at the same time also creating a flexible man in front of the machine. The work becomes a team and each team member is responsible for supervising themselves and others. There is a horizontalization of services in Toyotism. Large factories outsource their services, thus needing less labor and spreading their know-how by subsidized companies. The propagation of the advantages and methods of Toyotism is then begun. Unlike Fordism, where production determines demand, in Toyotism, demand determines production, that is: only what is demanded is produced, so it is produced faster and better. With Toyotism came the end of mass production. Among the organizational and management innovations, Total Quality Control (TQC) and Reengineering which constitute strategies that facilitate the adaptation of companies to the new configuration of international competitiveness, requiring not only technical changes, but also behavior and values.
- The 4th Industrial Revolution in progress
Now we are living the Fourth Industrial Revolution with the advent of Industry 4.0 that is based on some common technologies of our day, which are being potentialized for the application in the manufacture, that allow the emergence of the intelligent factories. The term Industry 4.0 appeared at the Hannover Fair in Germany in 2011. At the time, Siegfried Dais (Robert Bosch) and Kagermann (German Academy of Science and Engineering) led a study of the implementation of this industry model for the German Federal Government. Published in 2013, the study dealt with the connection between machines, systems, and assets that enabled industries to have exact control of every stage of the value chain to make their factories smart. An intelligent factory is one that can achieve more and more efficiency, in an autonomous and customizable way, to predict failures, schedule maintenance, adapt to what was not planned in an agile and versatile way, consulting historical data, digitizing processes in an environment where systems, machines and assets are interconnected and secure. The main technologies that integrate the 4.0 Industry are:
- Internet of Things (IoT);
- 3D printing;
- Hybrid manufacturing;
- Simulation systems;
- Cloud computing;
- Sensors and actuators;
- Big data;
- Connecting systems between machines;
- Communication infrastructure;
- Artificial intelligence;
- Advanced robotics.
Now we have connected industry and intelligent factories with everything connected to the Internet (IoT), which was facilitated by the use of Wireless (which allows the wide use of wireless networks), Virtualization (several computers interconnected from software) , through the use of Cloud (all information shared and made available by the cloud), Big Data assertiveness (thousands of intelligibly assembled data to facilitate decision making) and the ability to gather information and generate more important data, materials tracking. Today, we have connected industry and intelligent factories with fully automated production lines with intelligent machines with the use of disruptive technologies, without human presence, fully connected and acting autonomously.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by the application of artificial intelligence to its production and management systems. Systems that simulate human intelligence, with its capacity for reasoning, problem solving, and decision making – this is so-called artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence is a set of technologies that act with the manipulation of data and impacts all sectors of society. Accenture’s survey evaluated the impact of AI in 12 developed economies and revealed that it could double annual economic growth rates by 2035 and that the impact of AI technologies on the business sector will increase labor productivity by up to 40% optimization of time. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said that artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as fire and electricity for mankind. AI, as it’s also called, is in mobile apps, games, computer security programs and streaming service algorithms, social networks, and more, like the world’s most-used search engine, Google. Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines.
- Artificial intelligence and productive systems
AI can replace human beings in production activities, but it can maximize their productivity. According to data from Accenture in one of its surveys, by 2035, AI will contribute to a 40% increase in productivity in the sector reducing costs and increasing manufacturing output around the globe. The current landscape of AI systems enables them to understand the entire production and business process and automatically identify which are the key issues that need to be addressed. A neural network is able to analyze more than a billion data in a few seconds, being an incredible tool to support a decision maker within a company, thus guaranteeing the best option among the possible ones. As the data collected are constantly updated , AI systems always update their results, making it possible for managers to have access to recent information on variations occurring in the system performance of the company. Among the benefits of AI for the production systems are:
Reliability of decisions: automation and availability of data allows conscious decision-making, with confidence that they will be the best alternatives at all times.
Insights: In addition to searching for information at certain times, analyzing the data presented by the AI can also generate business opportunities that would otherwise not have been viewed.
Security: Keeping IA systems within the company helps prevent errors and data leaks by employees, as their contact with information is considerably reduced and various processes are carried out by the system.
There are several examples of IA application in the business sector with the goal of helping and improving productivity. Here are some examples of how Artificial Intelligence is being used:
Virtual Assistants
We have several examples of virtual assistants who use technologies such as Voice Recognition to capture and understand the demands of their users and process commands.Even though this technology has not yet secured a captive place inside the offices, it is already possible to use virtual assistants for various activities, which makes it easier for employees to improve their productivity. For example, these systems are already capable of scheduling meetings, managing schedules, performing searches, among other activities, all coordinated by voice commands, facilitating the lives of employees of a company. The main players on the market today are Amazon, with its Alexa solution, Microsoft with Cortana assistant, Apple with the famous Siri and Google Assistant, from the search giant.
Demand Forecasting
AI and machine learning enable their solutions to anticipate market demands through complex mathematical models, which is a great way to stay one step ahead of the competition. Since IA systems identify a future business opportunity , they can pass this information on to the decision maker, who decides what attitude they will take in anticipation.
Identifying Threats
Information security within a company is critical to ensuring business continuity and hence your productivity. The AI can be used to perform constant surveys of the company’s infrastructure and ensure its protection. In addition, artificial intelligence solutions can perform the preventive maintenance of several systems, thus avoiding that they are outdated or slow which may end up affecting the company’s processes.
Check employee satisfaction
The high turnover of employees can end up becoming a problem for productivity, because the company lose time with training, and the employee loses interest or seeks other opportunities soon after. AI solutions can accompany the employees, analyzing their data and identifying dissatisfaction, thus helping HR sector to take the necessary measures to keep the professional satisfied and productive.
Investments in technologies that use AI to increase business productivity tend to increase gradually. Companies can use various strategies to remain competitive in the market. However, there must already be an investment in digital transformation and increasingly lean processes to take advantage of this evolution. Organizations that fail to make this adaptation may be sealing their destiny to failure, since they can no longer keep pace the evolution of technologies.
- Brazil and industrial development
In general, companies are the center of innovation in a capitalist society. It is through them that the technologies, inventions, products, finally, ideas, come to market. The vast majority of large companies in the central capitalist countries have entire areas dedicated to innovation, with research and development (R & D) laboratories that rely on several researchers. The contribution of companies in R & D in Brazil is very small. This fact explains why Brazil remains one of the least innovative countries in the world. The latest version of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a report that maps the level of entrepreneurship in the world, shows that the level of innovation in Brazil has hardly increased in recent years. According to the survey, slightly more than 10% of the new businesses in the country bring to the market truly innovative products and services, which places Brazil at the same level as Trinidad & Tobago and ahead of only Bangladesh, where the index is 10 %. In 2011, Brazil appeared in the last position, with less than 10% of innovative businesses.
Brazil is facing a lack of innovation on the part of the Brazilian company because it is a country of late industrialization that occurred from 1930, 150 years after the 1st Industrial Revolution in England, besides suffering a process of deindustrialization that began in 1985 and that was deepened from 1990 when the neoliberal model of opening up of the Brazilian economy to the imported products and foreign investments, especially in the industry was implanted. In the 1980s, the share of the manufacturing industry in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 33% and today it is 11.3%, almost equal to that registered in 1947, which was 11.9%. This means that there has been a de-industrialization of the country. Brazil’s subordination to international capital in the industrial sector and other sectors of the Brazilian economy explains why it is among the last countries to be placed in terms of innovation. The foreign companies installed here contribute little to the research and development (R & D) because they have theirs research centers in the developed capitalist countries.
Regrettably, most Brazilian industries are not yet ready to use the systems for the industry 4.0 because, in addition to the factors described above, they have been deeply affected by the recessive economic crisis that has hit Brazil since 2014. Moreover, since 1980 there is no policy industrial and of foreign trade that contributes to the development of Brazilian industry. The total number of companies in Brazil that adopts the technologies of Industry 4.0 is only 2%. In order to overcome Brazil’s current deficiencies, it is essential that the Brazilian government develops a huge effort by investing in R & D in public universities and research institutes, as well as placing the national private sector at the center of the innovation effort to promote the country’s economic and technological progress.
REFERENCES
AGUILHAR,Ligia. Brasil continua sendo um dos países menos inovadores do mundo. Disponível no website <http://blogs.pme.estadao.com.br/inovar-e-preciso/brasil-continua-sendo-um-dos-paises-menos-inovadores-do-mundo/>.
ALCOFORADO, Fernando. A Invenção de um novo Brasil. Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2017.
______________________. As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo. Curitiba: Editora CRV, 2016.
______________________. Globalização e Desenvolvimento. São Paulo: Editora Nobel, 2006.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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