The 4th industrial revolution and its attendant technologies have become all the rage, to the extent that those in the know simply refer to it as “4.0”.
Sadly, said transport industry expert Riaz Haffejee, South African businesses “haven’t really understood what it means, and are still grappling with 3.0”, the previous industrial revolution that gave the world advancement through automated computing systems.
Speaking at the recent Manufacturing Indaba in Sandton, Haffejee said that whether Africa liked it not, the quickening pace of innovation would drag it along on a path of dizzying progress that would leave behind those who failed to embrace intelligent information systems.
The CEO of Sumitomo Rubber in Durban, a tyre manufacturer with tracks across most of Africa, enthused that “industry 4.0 takes the changes in automation and underlying base technologies and adds on top of it the internet of things, cloud computing, robotic helpers, machine learning and artificial intelligence”.
He stressed that businesses across the spectrum should take heed that “these technologies produce things that are far more efficient and proficient in propelling production forward in a mass-customised manner”. It was the only way, Haffejee said, for business to keep up with growing consumer demand from a global population that was fast approaching nine billion. Unfortunately it’s easier said than done as smart technologies “are all changing the world in an accelerated fashion and everything is intertwined.
“Bring in industry 4.0 from a manufacturing point of view and it really becomes challenging in keeping up with where you should be as a factory concern.” In addition, said Haffejee, “keeping customers happy globally should be balanced against cost, jobs, skills, and investment cycles. Put everything together and it makes for a complex puzzle to make sense of.”
Haffejee’s argument that South African businesses aren’t accepting and acting on technological innovation fast enough has also been confirmed by Arthur Goldstuck, an innovation specialist and MD of World Wide Worx, who recently released alarming figures from 400 businesses that participated in a survey about 4.0. His research showed among other things that only 6% of the companies approached had introduced robotics into their operations.
For the most part 49% appeared to have little interest if any in implementing robotics, believing it was too expensive. At least 45% of respondents expressed the intent to introduce robotics at a later stage.
Robotics was also only one of the smart tech categories that Goldstuck assessed. Generally speaking he concluded that South African companies were interested in cutting-edge innovations but were reluctant to invest in them because of cost concerns.
However, Haffejee warned that companies that did not join the innovation juggernaut would get left behind. It’s a rough ride, but you have to grab the digital bull by the horns.
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The internet of things is propelling production forward in a mass-customised manner. – Riaz Haffejee
