Industry 4.0 and Its Suitability in Post COVID-19
Abstract
In the present era of technological advancement and rapid change, mankind faces different kinds of challenges. The product lifecycle has been shortened dramatically, and the manufacturing industry is moving from mass production to the high personalization of mass products. This era is widely known as the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0 (I4.0). It seems that soon it will be inevitable for every society. The paper briefly focuses on empirical insights into the impact of I4.0 on various sectors of society. The traditional approaches to manufacturing, servicing, and public policy planning will no longer remain effective and would be transformed. I4.0 should be observed as an Opportunity 4.0 and draw attention to the industry, academia, and policymakers’ in changing scenarios. Expectations from them are also underlined. Its favorable features in the post-COVID-19 era are also discussed. This short article invites attention to foresee beyond I4.0, e.g. Industry 5.0 and more such progressions.
1. Introduction
Humanity traversed itself from the Stone Age to a civilized and then industrialized society. From the first industrial revolution in 1760 to the fourth one in the present time, every industrial revolution has impacted our society in many ways. It affects how we live, interact, communicate, manufacture, teach, educate, dispose-off goods, farming, servicing, diagnostics, etc. It can be said that every industrial revolution affects our society. The next industrial revolution is not an exception, especially at present, where no one can isolate itself from the events of its surroundings. Technological advancement enables the instant flow of information anywhere on the globe. The first industrial revolution tremendously increased productivity by introducing mechanized and steam-powered factories.
In contrast, the second industrial revolution brought productivity to new heights with the development of electrically powered units (Wang et al., 2017; Chen, 2017; Yin et al., 2017; Moraes and Lepikson, 2017). The advent of computers and PLC launched productivity at newer and higher levels of mass production at low cost, and the era is widely termed industry 3.0. The use of highly integrated, automated, and sophisticated technologies (like modern information and communication technology, cyber-physical systems, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, internet of things, internet of services, industrial internet of things, embedded systems, augmented reality, etc.) launched it into a new horizon of productivity, mass customization, and cost reduction. It paved the way for the fourth industrial revolution.
The paper focuses on understanding the fourth industrial revolution and investigates its impact on society in various aspects. It also highlights the suitability of I4.0 and related technologies in the post-pandemic. The rest of the study is arranged as follows. Understanding I4.0 is developed in Sec. 2, and its salient features are elaborated in Sec. 2.1. Attempts for peeping beyond I4.0 are made in Sec. 2.2. Section 3 is devoted to major impact areas of I4.0. Impacts of I4.0, namely way to manufacturing and service, distress to industry and workers, way to educate and train, policymaking, agriculture, and healthcare sectors are discussed in Secs. 3.1–3.6, respectively. Major challenges industries face in the post-COVID-19 era and the suitability of I4.0 and opportunities 4.0 are discussed in Sec. 4. Conclusions drawn along with the scope for future work are presented in Sec. 5.
2. Industry 4.0
In this section, an attempt has been made to develop a basic understanding of I4.0.
2.1. Evolution of industry 4.0
After the first industrial revolution took place in Great Britain during the 18th-century, the evolution of manufacturing can be divided into four different eras from Industry 1.0 to Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The first Industrial revolution meant the utilization of steam power and mechanization of production, while in the second Industrial revolution, industries were developed based on electricity and assembly line production. The third industrial revolution started with partial automation and later became able to automate an entire production process with the help of robots, computers, programmable logic controllers, etc. In the progression of the developments during the third industrial revolution, at the end of the 20st-century, academicians and researchers noticed that boundaries of traditional engineering and technology disciplines were disappearing and started focusing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies, research, and applications. The technological advancement and integration of one discipline into another brought us on the verge of I4.0. To compete with uprising countries like China and India, developed countries, especially Germany, started using highly advanced technologies in manufacturing and conceptualized the term “Industrie 4.0” (Khan and Turowski, 2016). The term “I4.0” was first presented at Hannover Fair in 2011 (Duan and Da Xu, 2021; Sigov et al., 2022), providing the impetus to this highly technologically advanced manufacturing strategy (Maresova et al., 2018). Shortly, it will make roads into every way of life. Shahroon and Hussain (2018) rightly remarked about I4.0 that boundaries between biological, physical, and digital systems are being blurred in this era. Real-time communication between every possible pair viz machine to machine, human to machine, machine to human, intra-machine is the key of I4.0. In I4.0, the machines are connected and integrated through sophisticated technologies, namely the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Big Data Analytics (Xu and Duan, 2019; Duan and Da Xu, 2021; Javaid et al., 2021), BlockChain, Cloud Computing (Tan et al., 2021), Cobotics, etc. and empowered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Javaid et al., 2021). Various literature on I4.0 enabling technologies are available in the literature (Xu et al., 2018; Xu and Duan, 2019). Real-time communication and remote control of machines are possible. Some authors rightly claimed that I4.0 is not bringing anything new (Drath and Horch, 2014). It is achieved by merging a few highly sophisticated and well-established technologies. The integration of these highly sophisticated technologies in production systems is the novelty of I4.0 (Kumar et al., 2020). It paved the way for integrating the digital and physical world (Rojko, 2017; Kumar et al., 2022). In I4.0, the entire operations of a manufacturing plant and management of the value chain are digitized (Shahroon and Hussain, 2018; Abdirad et al., 2021) and run autonomously without any (hardly any) human intervention.
Though the six design principles of I4.0 (Hermann et al., 2016; Monteiro et al., 2018; Kumar et al., 2021), namely Interoperability, Virtualization, Decentralization, Real-time capability, Service orientation, and Modularity, is enough to give the idea of the concept, still a formal definition is required. Many definitions are available in the literature (Moeuf et al., 2017; Buer et al., 2018). Over 100 different definitions of I4.0 are noticed by Moeuf et al. (2017) in the literature. To better understand concept I4.0, the need for a clear and well-accepted definition is felt. The understanding proposed by Kumar et al. (2021) was found suitable for the study and presented here in italics.
“I4.0 is a new manufacturing philosophy used for highly automated, sophisticated and reconfigurable manufacturing systems equipped with self-aware machines with real-time communication between man & man, man & machine, machine & machine; which facilitates remote access and empower the system for instant decision making autonomously with the support of data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).”
2.2. Salient features of industry 4.0
A plethora of literature is available on I4.0 and mounting. It is tough to capture the essence of I4.0 precisely. Here an attempt has been made to present the salient features through a self-explanatory Fig. 1. Further details of I4.0 (Qin et al., 2016; Chen, 2017; Wang et al., 2017; Yin et al., 2017; Braccini and Margherita, 2018; Bonilla et al., 2018; Trotta and Garengo, 2018; Carvalho et al., 2019; Hamrol et al., 2019; Sanghavi et al., 2019; Kumar et al., 2020; Xu, 2020a,b; Kumar et al., 2021) can be referred in a single line, it can be said that
Fig. 1. Salient features of industry 4.0.
“I4.0 converts a traditional manufacturing/service organization into a knowledge-intense organization which empowers the manufacturing/service industry to produce mass-customization of personalized products/services respectively efficiently and economically.”
Mass production produces “N” number of pieces of the same product in a manufacturing unit. In contrast, mass-customization of personalized products means the production of “N” number of different products in a manufacturing unit without altering its efficiency and productivity.
Automation is an efficient and mistake-proof alternative to humans (Sanghavi et al., 2019). I4.0 promotes automated operations without human involvement. In simple words, it manipulates the physical machines with the help of digital commands of the virtual world. It would transform the interaction between men and machines, resulting in the endless potential of innovation, creativity, and problem-solving in natural industrial settings with enhanced efficiency and productivity (Laudante, 2017). Every industrial revolution has paved the way for the next one. The time-span for each industrial revolution is going shorter and shorter.
2.3. Beyond industry 4.0
Earlier, the focus was on the development of newer technologies in traditional disciplines, but during the third industrial revolution, the boundaries between the traditional disciplines started disappearing. With the integration of such technologies, traditional discipline boundaries are disappeared. The amalgamation of highly sophisticated technologies is behind the emergence of the concept of I4.0 and created the way for other industrial revolutions beyond I4.0. In 2016, Sachsenmeier (2016) proposed that bionics and synthetic biology would lead society to industry 5.0. Later in 2017, Skobelev and Borovik (2017) sketched the image of Industry 5.0 with the penetration of Artificial Intelligence in man’s everyday life and their “cooperation” aiming for the enhancement of the capacity and the positioning the man at the “Centre of the Universe”. The concept is further strengthened by Paschek et al. (2019) and proposed that collaboration between humans and intelligent systems will be enhanced in Industry 5.0, transferring all monotonous, repetitive tasks to machines while creative and more responsible tasks to humans. For Industry 5.0 in 2019, Nahavandi (2019) proposed robots would be intertwined with the human brain and work as collaborators instead of competitors. Japanese started talking about the coming fifth industrial revolution (Industry 5.0) based on cooperation between man and machine (Petrillo et al., 2018). It will not be appropriate to remark that every aspect of manufacturing, business, and services can be taken care of by today’s machine itself except the use of emotional intelligence, self-healing, and the reproduction of self autonomously. The collaboration and cooperation between man and machine in the era of Industry 5.0 will bring society closer to the day when a machine will be able to use emotional intelligence, self-healing, and reproduce itself or produce a machine with the help of a few other machines autonomously. Cyborg machines/integration of man and machine may be the reality in the future. It will make the future unpredictable, uncertain, and frightening. It may be the start of the subsequent Industrial Revolutions may be Industry 6.0 and Industry 7.0.
3. Major Impact Areas of Industry 4.0
To comprehend the significant impact area and its possible impacts of I4.0, an extant review of the relevant literature and brainstorming with experts are carried out. I4.0 will affect and be more appropriate to say that it affects our society in every possible way. In the line of Industry 4.0, a large number of neologies like Education 4.0, Medicine 4.0, Hospital 4.0, Pharmacy 4.0, Society 4.0, Quality 4.0, Inspection 4.0, Logistics 4.0, Transport 4.0, Infrastructure 4.0, Hospitality 4.0, Agriculture 4.0, Farming 4.0, Research 4.0, Maintenance 4.0, etc. are in practice, and this reflects the profound impact of I4.0 on the general behavior of the society at large. The rise of new neologies is evidence of the impact of the new industrial revolution. Figure 2 reflects the six major thrust areas that will, in turn, affect society in the broad spectrum.
Fig. 2. Major impact areas of Industry 4.0.
3.1. Way to manufacturing and service
The “factory for future” concept will be a reality in this era of the fourth industrial revolution achieved with the integration of highly sophisticated technologies clubbed with Enterprise Architecture and Integration (Tan et al., 2021). Some industries have already started following its practices of it. Studies reveal that production industries will experience the most significant effect of I4.0 (Petrillo et al., 2018). The product life cycle will be shorter and shorter with time progression. Customized mass production (Posada et al., 2015) and services at a low cost will be a reality. The industry of the future will become more and more customer-centric. The manufacturing industries will be highly flexible, effective (Khan and Turowski, 2016), and reliable. Production planning and control will be shifted from a forecasting based model to real-time (Sanders et al., 2016; Kamble et al., 2018) and decentralization (Liu and Xu, 2017) based models. The efficient and optimum use of resources like raw material, machines, energy, etc., throughout the entire production/service/value chain and real-time sharing of resources, will dramatically increase the competitiveness and business value of the firm. The era is expected to open the doors of endless innovations and transform how humankind designs, manufactures, services, and delivers (Maresova et al., 2018). Customer is foremost in any business (Maresova et al., 2018) and remains updated with the progress of production and delivery of their customized product/service. The customer is empowered to suggest inputs at any stage, from product design to development. The customer also suggests when and where to manufacture (Kamble et al., 2018), deliver and service. A mature and effective enterprise resource planning (Da Xu, 2011) software is helpful. Viriyasitavat et al. (2020) proposed a Blockchain-based business process management framework for service composition in I4.0. The product of this era will also become from smart to smarter day by day. The manufacturing industry is moving from mass production to mass customization of products. Quality norms are going stronger day by day. Quality control through sampling will no longer remain sufficient to meet the required quality standards; 100% inspection will be an essential and common practice. It can be achieved through machine vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Companies have to train and re-train their workforce frequently with the advancement in the technologies and invest hugely in the training and skilling of its human resources. It will bring newer opportunities and challenges in front of industry leaders and managers. It will allow them to innovate and develop new business models. Industries are expected to deal with unprecedented sudden changes, and flexibility is the desired tool to deal with (Kumar and Sharma, 2015; Kumar et al., 2017). It could be said that the concept of lean manufacturing/agile manufacturing/Just in Time/flexibility could be implemented in full potential in this forthcoming manufacturing era. Further, industries will depend entirely on system-based production, services, automatic procurement, quality control, preventive maintenance, condition monitoring, receipts, dispatches, and other routine works without human interventions in a self-optimized and transparent way (Maresova et al., 2018).
3.2. Distress to industry and workers
Several studies reveal that implementing the fourth industrial revolution brings industry/employer and the workforce/employees in distress. Highly automated, self-adapted, self-regulated, and maintained smart factories of the new age will transform the job market (Benotsmane et al., 2019). On the one hand, the industry will face the condition of skill-shortage (Trotta and Garengo, 2018), and on the other hand, young workers are not prepared or even aware of the upcoming trends (Maresova et al., 2018) and threats. The industry will be bound to re-skilling their existing workforce or acquire the required skills from outside or employ a new workforce skilled in the desired technologies. There are possibilities of replacing part of the workforce with smart and intelligent devices (Benotsmane et al., 2019). A renowned Consulting firm, McKinsey, estimated the potential loss of 800 million jobs due to adopting and implementing these technologies of the age of the fourth industrial revolution (Trotta and Garengo, 2018). 47% of total US employment is at risk, as estimated by Maresova et al. (2018) and Osborne and Strokosch (2013). For Germany, Arntz et al. (2016) analyzed the ratio of vulnerable jobs to new jobs at 7:6. Loss of jobs will also cause people’s displacement from one place to another. In 2017, McKinsey Global Institute estimated a worldwide savings of $15 trillion on wages with the implementation of intelligent automation. A displacement of 400–800 million current occupations by 2030 is also estimated. The jobs like retail, manufacturing, physical labor, data collection, accommodation services are at high risk (futurithmic.com, 2019). Physical labor-intensive jobs will decrease significantly as smart and skilled workers will be required for smart factories (Benotsmane et al., 2019). The scope for “job-polarization” is also diagnosed by Trotta and Garengo (2018).
Though people are fearful of possible job losses due to digitization and robotics (Posada et al., 2015), there are possibilities for creating high-end jobs with increased job satisfaction and remuneration. It will enhance human learning, intelligence, and creativity by transferring labor-intensive, monotonous, and simple routine tasks (Müller et al., 2018). In 2017, McKinsey Global Institute also estimated that this new era will create 555 to 890 million new kinds of jobs by 2030 in new sectors like green technology, elderly care, consumer services, etc. (futurithmic.com, 2019). It will produce a job shift, i.e. nature of the job will change, and the need for new types of skills and jobs will arise. The McKinsey report also estimated that 75 to 375 million people have to switch from their present occupation and are bound to learn new skills by 2030 (futurithmic.com, 2019). The situation will stress the demand for higher qualifications and relatively higher skills in qualified labor (Kagermann, 2014; Maresova et al., 2018); therefore, it will demand higher cognitive skills and qualifications. Further, it will considerably widen the gap between highly qualified and lower qualified workforce (Maresova et al., 2018). Identifying, training, and retaining the right kind of dynamic workers will challenge human resource managers of smart organizations (Nagy et al., 2018).
Adoption and implementation speed of these new digital technologies in the production system, processes, supply chain, entire value chain, etc., i.e. in every aspect of manufacturing and servicing, will be the differentiating factor. Sommer (2015) in a study of German manufacturing, rightly revealed that Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) might be the first victim of it. At the same time, the large corporations will be the first movers in adopting this ensuing era and ultimately will be the highest beneficiary of the fruits of this industrial revolution. Large manufacturing enterprises have already understood the importance of the fourth industrial revolution and started working towards their adoption and implementation (Deloitte, 2014; Vrchota et al., 2019). Contrary to it, SMEs have their limitations to be first movers in adopting it. No industry sector (Nagy et al., 2018) better to say society and economy will remain unaffected by these revolutionary digital technologies.
3.3. Way to educate and train
In the present technologically advanced dynamic environment, every industrial sector is changing rapidly. The expectation from employees/workforce is also changing accordingly. Providing the human resources as per the industrial requirement is the responsibility lying on academia’s time-tested shoulders. The traditional qualifications will no longer be sufficient and become less valuable in the future, and a new set and kind of qualifications and skills will emerge. A highly skilled management team will be needed for its implementation. Higher education has already started facing deep crises. Residential campuses and large buildings will no longer be required and survive (Shahroon and Hussain, 2018). Centuries-old practices and traditions followed by academia have to change dramatically. Another education model for the future — Education 4.0 is there (Shahroon and Hussain, 2018). It will not be as simple as we have been doing for centuries. Academia for the future will have to address issues like convergence, power shifts, contingency, etc., in addition to technological issues. The subject separation/boundaries will not be there (Shahroon and Hussain, 2018). Since knowledge and skill of information technology will be essential for future organizations, academia has to develop the ability in the future workforce from the elementary school level (Benotsmane et al., 2019). Academia of the future should discharge the following responsibilities effectively with accountability in a cost-effective manner:
| • | Industry integration, live projects, internships, and hands-on experience | ||||
| • | Learning by doing powered with 24×7 accessibility of course content like massive open online courses (MOOCs), Chat rooms, etc. | ||||
| • | Shahroon and Hussain (2018) reported that an innovative coding university has already started functioning 24×7 in Paris without any book, teacher, or tuition fee from the year 2013. | ||||
| • | Development of a new curriculum based on the pressing need of industry like artificial intelligence, data analytics. | ||||
| • | Design of novel interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary curriculums. | ||||
| • | Continuous up-gradation of the curriculum as per industry requirements with a futuristic vision and relevance. | ||||
| • | Examine multiple entries and exit points to provide relevant education, exposure, skilling, and training as per requirement. | ||||
| • | Frequent re-skilling to its trainers and faculty members. | ||||
| • | Break traditional barriers, promote imagination, innovation, creation, curiosity, and collaboration. | ||||
| • | Should develop a cohesive transformation and linkages between traditional knowledge to modern technology. | ||||
| • | Should inculcate a sense of responsibility, sense of social connectivity, teamwork, ethics and morality, spiritual values, and national identity. | ||||
The era of Industry4.0 is the time of unprecedented transformations and unimaginable change in education and unfolded the entire education supply chain (Li, 2020). It can be achieved by simply adopting the change and being ready for future changes. In their daily routine, academics should adopt technology-enabled innovative practices like online classes, virtual classrooms, etc.
3.4. Policy making
In general, Government policies play a major role in the success and failure of any industry. Government policies are usually in a supportive role (Maresova et al., 2018) for providing a safe and conducive environment for flourishing the industry. Adoption and implementation of smart manufacturing practices will affect all stakeholders of society. The smart industries of the future have their challenges, issues, and policy requirements and expectations. A dynamic and frequently revisable National and Regional policies are required to tackle the issues with a futuristic global vision. The policymakers should keep the following issues in their mind while policymaking:
| • | A robust regulatory framework for adopting Intelligent manufacturing and services. | ||||
| • | Solid and effective laws for cyber-security, cyber-crime, use of artificial intelligence, crime through smart machines/devices (there are the possibilities of the use of these technologies in crime), and intellectual property right. | ||||
| • | Investment policies and readiness of financial institutions to encourage and fund/soft loan to industry to adopt I4.0 practices. | ||||
| • | New and dynamic education policies suit changing requirements of skill, training, and knowledge. | ||||
| • | Policy and legal framework for an industry–academia partnership to deal with changing training/skilling requirements and encourage both industry and academia to partner in the more considerable interest of society. | ||||
| • | Education policies for skill training, re-skilling, foreign language training, and continuous education. | ||||
| • | Policies to encourage public, private, public–private partnership investments in education. | ||||
| • | Policies for 24×7 learning, online universities, and certificates, there are chances of personification and cheating. | ||||
| • | Policies to handle urban production, social disruption, dislocated workforce, demographic change (Moraes and Lepikson, 2017), income imbalance, the stability of income, and more considerable social security. | ||||
| • | A policy for procurement of raw material to end the disposal of the product after its usable life. | ||||
Environment and ecology are the shared resources not only for mankind but also for all living and non-living organisms. Keeping it intact and not harming it is the responsibility of everyone on the globe for our own sake. With the implementation of the I4.0, both product, cost and life will dramatically decrease. Hence, a different environment and ecology policy, especially for safe disposal of the products and not the use of environmentally harmful substances, is also the need of the hour.
3.5. Agriculture
It is among the impact areas is not much studied. IoT-based irrigations, soil moisture control, and other intelligent systems will sooner be the reality. Machine vision and IoT found their application in area like crop disease control systems, etc. These technologies may be used in several ways to enhance crop yield. Agriculture robots like Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms (Patil and Shekhawat, 2019) are already available. Iaksch et al. (2021) reviewed the literature on digitalization and Big Data in smart farming. They observed around 2401 articles related to it. Almost all crop cultivation processes, from sowing to traversing and transferring crops from harvester to transport vehicles for market and warehouse, are sequentials, which require coordination/interaction between machines and/human operators. Farmers also have to deal with all resource planning and supply chain uncertainties. In this forthcoming era, the technical level of farming equipment will be comparable to that of the industry, even exceeding it in some cases. The high degree of mobility of the production facilities makes planning and control more difficult than in industrial environments (Braun et al., 2018). An attempt has been to summarize the benefits of technology-assisted precision farming (Patil and Shekhawat, 2019) with enhanced animal management under agriculture 4.0 in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Benefits of technology assisted precision farming.
3.6. Way to medical diagnostics
The rise of newer diseases demands highly advanced, precise, and accurate technology and procedures for their remedy. I4.0 has the wide-ranging capability of manufacturing highly personalized medical implants with innovative tools, instruments, and procedures for healthcare in a cost-effective manner (Javaid and Haleem, 2019). It is capable enough to extend the concept of the digital hospital to the last man of society. With the help of the tools of I4.0, the complete, real-time monitoring of a patient is possible even remotely. It creates new manufacturing opportunities in healthcare by creating new and innovative ways of patient care and monitoring (Javaid and Haleem, 2019). The rapid proliferation of wearable devices and smartphones, utilizing IoT and wearable intelligence into pervasive, helps in upgrading the conventional healthcare system into a personalized healthcare system (Yang et al., 2021). It will change the way of drug discovery, diagnostics, and hospital management. It has the capability of turning the concept of telemedicine into everyday practice. For more details on I4.0 and healthcare, the literature (Hermann et al., 2016; Ajmera and Jain, 2019; Javaid and Haleem, 2019; Yang et al., 2021; Aceto et al., 2020) can be referred to.
4. Post-COVID-19 Era
4.1. Post COVID-19
COVID-19 is a highly contagious pandemic spread through physical contact. In addition to its contagious ability and speed, globalization played a crucial role in its widespread. It compelled the countries to go for multiple months-long lockdowns and stalled their economy. The worst affected regions from the pandemic are the liberal countries of the industrialized world like the USA, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy, etc. The situation cannot be continued longer, and countries are bound to come out from the lockdown stage to the stage of normalcy. Society is quickly learning to live with this virus. Availability of the vaccine(s) and cure are helping in it. It will change our working and social habits for a very long time. Industries have to follow the social distancing norms and work with a reduced workforce. Ultimately this all will add to the cost of products and services. These aspects are discussed in the paper. The increased use of information and communication technology and practices like virtual meetings/classes/diagnostics will not be stalled and remain in practice to a large extent.
4.2. Major challenges in front of the industry in the Post-COVID-19 era
The post-pandemic era has some new challenges on different dimensions of our lives, and some major ones are discussed in Sec. 3. The industry has to follow some challenges and to change their working amid as per the changed working conditions. The major challenges to be faced by the industry in the post-COVID-19 era is elaborated with the help of Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Major challenges to be faced by the industry in post COVID-19.
4.3. Suitability of I4.0 to Post-COVID-19 era
The per capita consumption rate in developed nations like the USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc., with a comparatively lower population, is higher. Due to this, developing contries like China, Bangladesh, India export goods and services to them. This aspect was one of the major reasons behind the discovery and implementation of I4.0 practices, also, to check the flow of wealth from developed countries to uprising countries like China and India (Khan and Turowski, 2016). COVID-19 is first noticed in China and then spread over the globe. The human and monetary loss to the developed world due to COVID-19 will strengthen the feeling of Nationalism. This possible change in world perception and desire to reduce the dependency on other countries inculcates the strong aspiration to manufacture the products and services at least in needed quantity and quality in the country itself. So that spread of any other such pandemic can be avoided in the future. It will drastically affect the global manufacturing and supply chain. In addition to manufacturing hospitality industry is among the most affected Industry by COVID-19. For its revival and avoiding the vast losses from any other such pandemic, reducing the human touch in the service and hospitality industry is the need of the hour.
This situation is conducive to automated manufacturing and servicing, promoting the adoption and implementation of I4.0. Its key characteristics like the ability to manufacture high quality, customized products in desired quantities without human intervention or manufacturing without any physical human touch, Remote manufacturing, and real-time autonomous decision making with the support of intelligent machines and artefacts fit it in the requirement and expectations of Post-COVID-19 era, for industries like manufacturing, hospitality, service, etc. I4.0 is already holding the attention of the manufacturing community worldwide and has placed itself at the pinnacle. Its demand and position will further strengthen in post-COVID-19 society. Salah et al. (2020) already developed and presented an automatic yoghurt filling station based on the concept of I4.0.
The following characteristics of I4.0 would make it an appropriate manufacturing practice in the Post-COVID-19 era.
| • | Hardly any human touch in production or services. | ||||
| • | The capability of Real-time traceability/tracking throughout the entire value/supply chain. | ||||
| • | The system is highly flexible, modular, and reconfigurable. | ||||
| • | Production and Product flexibility: Capability of the system to handle changing demand and product design. | ||||
| • | Hardly any stereotype routine work and physical work for human. | ||||
| • | Requirements of less workforce, savings on salary and increase in the profitability. | ||||
| • | The capability of endless creativity and innovation. | ||||
| • | Enhanced environmental benefits. | ||||
| • | Newer business opportunities. | ||||
| • | Availability of more time for personal work, family and society. | ||||
| • | More Creative, innovative and control tasks for human. | ||||
Above mentioned characteristics are expected from both the manufacturing and service sectors in the post-COVID-19 era.
4.4. Opportunity 4.0
As inferred from various reports and studies, it will disrupt the market (Büchi et al., 2020). Industries and nations are bound to invest in new technology, and skilling/upskilling of their manpower. Thus, it would create a huge business potential and opportunity for technology companies, entrepreneurs, trainers, and workers. Successful training/upskilling will dramatically improve the worth of a human resource in the job market. The rising demand for MOOCs, online courses, and virtual labs will also bring a huge opportunity for academia. I4.0 is changing the norms of the game. It will result in several startups, consultancy, training firms, etc. Müller et al. (2018) righty remarked that inherent Environmental and social opportunities would also drive industry 4.0 adoption. As discussed in Sec. 3.2, it will create more jobs than job losses. But people and organizations have to change dynamically to keep pace with the technology; otherwise, they will become obsolete in no time. Continuous technological and skill up-gradation will be the key to success in this new regime.
5. Conclusion
The study developed an understanding of I4.0 with its growing importance. It highlights the suitability of I4.0 practices in the post-pandemic era and explores areas significantly impacted by the adoption of I4.0 technologies. It brings researchers’ attention towards its growing acceptance and scope of further work on its impact and suitability study in different spectrums of society. It also invites the considerations of industry, academia, and policymakers in changing scenarios.
The following fourth industrial revolution will impact the all-around sphere of our society; researchers have already started using terms like Education 4.0, Economics 4.0, Business 4.0, Hospitality 4.0, Health 4.0, Medicine 4.0, Service 4.0, Skills 4.0, Agriculture 4.0, etc. in the tune of I4.0. It will allow for more significant opportunities (Büchi et al., 2020) and would be taken as the “Opportunity 4.0” (Kumar et al., 2020). The pandemic brings us closer to the use of ICT in all spheres of society. To deal with transformational challenges from the present state of the industry (whether Industry 2.0 or Industry 3.0) to the stage of I4.0, not only every organization but every nation needs to have a well-planned strategy as per its own need, constraints, challenges, and strengths. According to the World Economic Forum analysis for this workplace transition, employees, employers, and government must do their part (futurithmic.com, 2019). The interconnection between smart devices allows us to experience new features and assist in innovating, developing, and nurturing new business plans. The employment trends have already started shifting from delivery-based to discovery-based jobs. Its impact on our social life, education, and procedures leads us to a new economic growth horizon. In this era, the life of almost every innovation technology is decreasing, and its spreading speed is enormously high. Society must have a dynamic system that will frequently revise and continuously upgrade its policy planning, education, human resource practices, public laws, healthcare, etc. As per the changing need of time with an eye on the future aspects. Its operations with a minimum human touch make it suitable for pandemic situations like COVID-19.
The compatibility and capability of information and modern communication technology successfully implemented work-from-home culture during COVID-19 lock-downs. This cost-effective and productive work philosophy cannot be abolished, but many industries will follow this to a large extent. In this era characteristics and production capacity of the manufacturing system prevails over the cost-benefit and return on investment. These will be an additional advantage. The developed and economically strong countries, originators, and first movers in adopting I4.0 practices will rush towards its implementation. On the other hand, economically weak countries whose economy is badly affected due to prolonged lockdown and other consequences of COVID-19 have to postpone their massive investment plans to adopt I4.0 practices.
5.1. Limitations and future scope
This study is based on the literature review and discussion with the persons from industry and academia at middle and upper-level positions, mainly from India. There is a scope of more such studies with a more diversified and cross-functional group of experts with different professional and social backgrounds, hierarchical order, and from different geographical locations. The scope for sector and region specifics studies is also there. There is a broad scope for further studies dealing with quantitative aspects that are general as well as industry-specific. Such studies would help in bringing out deeper insights about real challenges and their quantum for the industry, academia, and society.
