In the world of Industry 4.0, digital transformation will no longer be an option or even a competitive advantage, but rather will become the table stakes for doing business. With broad-based digital adoption and an increasingly level playing field, companies will face the challenge of ever-evolving demands from customers, employees and partners.

Successful companies will be those that build upon foundational SMAC capabilities and apply a new generation of technologies and innovations to differentiate themselves in how they create, deliver and capture value.

The 4th Industrial Age or Industry 4.0, is essentially a range of technologies that combine hardware, software and biology (cyber-physical systems), and emphasize advances in communication and connectivity. Technologies such as loT and the intelligent edge, mixed-reality and digital twins, 3-D printing, distributed ledger technologies, artificial intelligence, cognitive systems, bio-engineering and quantum computing fall within the ambit of Industry 4.0. In this article, we examine a few of these technologies and the Impact they will have on the who, what and how of businesses, and hence their business models:

• IoT and the Intelligent Edge
• Mixed Reality and Digital Twins
• 3-D Printing
• Distributed Ledger Technologies
• Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Systems
• IOT and the Intelligent Edge

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the idea of digitization of the physical world around us by embedding sensors, and often computing in some form, into all types of things-both living and non-living. This adds a level of intelligence to devices that would otherwise be dumb, enabling them to communicate real-time data without a human being involved, effectively merging the digital and physical worlds. IoT is evolving due to the convergence of multiple technologies such as commodity sensors, real-time analytics, networking and communications and embedded systems. Fifth generation of wireless technologies (5G) offers the promise of hyper-connectivity across entire processes, with potential for gains in productivity and accelerated innovation.

In the manufacturing world, loT in the form of instrumentation, wireless sensor networks, control systems and automation have been prevalent for some time, but the commoditization of computing and near-ubiquitous connectivity will bring loT to nearly all spheres from smart homes to smart cities, healthcare to transportation, energy to environmental applications. Following are a couple of examples of loT and the Intelligent Edge in agriculture and public safety that offer a glimpse into their breadth of applications and the potential impact on business models.

Mixed Reality and Digital Twins

Mixed reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations, where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Mixed reality does not exclusively take place in either the physical or virtual world, but is a hybrid of reality and virtual reality, encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality via immersive technology. Digital information is taken beyond two-dimensional (2-D) screens to a three-dimensional (3-D) experience by using holograms, which are images made of light and sound. It allows people to interact with holograms in physical space, meaning that they can view and manipulate holographic images on their own in the air or in combination with real physical objects.

3-D Printing

Three dimensional (3-D) printing is a process of making 3-D physical objects from a computer-aided design (CAD) digital model. The process usually involves adding material successively layer by layer, which is why it is also called additive manufacturing. Though 3-D printing has been around, it has surged in popularity and usage in recent years. With improvements and variations in the technologies of both the machines and materials used in 3-D printing, costs will drop, making the technology accessible and cost effective across application domains.

In the context of Industry 4.0, 3-D printing will transform the digital into the physical in ways that will spur innovations across industry verticals. Industries such as automotive and aerospace that use prototyping or where a product is not targeted for mass production, 3-D printing will offer mass customization. In consumer applications, companies will offer cloud-based 3-D printing services to build hyper-customized products, a personalized mobile phone case, for example, without the need to own a 3-D printer.

Distributed Ledger Technologies

Distributed ledger technologies refer to a category of technologies that include block chain, which uses cryptography and a distributed messaging protocol to create shared ledgers. This enables multiple parties to share access to the same data, at virtually the same time, with an unprecedented level of transparency. Initially developed for the financial services industry to increase trading efficiency, improve regulatory control and eliminate unnecessary intermediaries, distributed ledger technologies have expanded to other industries, including supply chain and logistics, helping companies hardwire trust into a variety of transactions.

Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Systems

Colloquially, the term artificial intelligence is often used to describe machines (or computers) that mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as learning and problem solving. While Artificial General Intelligence in the true sense is still some time away, for many narrow-Al cognitive functions such as image recognition, speech synthesis, language understanding (in the narrow sense), machines have or are reaching human parity. Much speculation and prediction, both utopian and dystopian, by industry luminaries, scientists and world leaders can be found; however, in this section we will focus on a few examples where the democratization of Al as a technology is helping to solve important accessibility, sustainability and humanitarian challenges.

Seeing Al provides people who are blind or with low vision an easier way to understand the world around them through the cameras on their smartphones. Leveraging on-device facial recognition technology, the app can even describe the physical appearance of people as well as their facial expressions. The cognitive capabilities of the app are continually getting enhanced with plans to incorporate haptic feedback and mixed-reality technologies toward innovative functionalities.

In the age of industry 4.0 organizations especially MSMEs are going to face larger questions related to sustainability, society, business performance and future business models. Adoption of digital technologies will require a mindset change for the entrepreneurs of MSMEs. For a country like India where MSMEs have a significant share in employment and exports this study would be imperative to explore how they can manage the technology issues, people issues and performance issues. Governments, Centre as well as States need to relook their policies for MSMEs in the age of SME 4.0