Basically, you can say that something major happened in the industrialization of our civilization in every century since the 1700s. The First Industrial Revolution started in 1784, and since we have made remarkable achievements in the 1800s, 1900s, and now the 2000s. We never looked back.

A recap for the major industrialization to mark these centuries:

Industry 1.0 – Steam and Mechanization
Industry 2.0 – Electricity and Mass Production
Industry 3.0 – Electronics, Computers and Automation
Industry 4.0 – IoT, Semiconductors, Data Centers and AI

We are going to call for case studies in different fields, and we would take the study based on our sequences as the following:

Case Study #1 – Automobile Industry: The Machine Becomes Intelligent
Electric vehicles (EVs), batteries, robotics, semiconductors, software-defined vehicles, autonomous driving, and China’s rise to become a global economic power.

Case Study #2 – Fashion Textile & Industry: From Forecasting to On-Demand
AI-assisted design, demand forecasting, digital sampling, automated cutting/sewing, radio-frequency identification (RFID), nearshoring, responsive production/on-demand model, sustainability, circularity and resale, and fashion branding.

Case Study #3 – Logistics & Supply Chains: The World Becomes Connected
Maritime routes, canals and chokepoints, smart ports, geopolitics and geoeconomics, automated warehouses, robotics, and AI logistics and resilience.

Case Study #4 – Energy: Powering Industry 4.0
Smart grids, renewables, batteries and storage, nuclear power, AI-managed electricity systems, and the rapidly growing requirements of data centers.

Case Study #5 – Agriculture & Food Chain: Digital Farming
Autonomous machinery, drones, sensors, precision irrigation, satellite imagery, AI crop management, robotic harvesting, and food distribution.

Case Study #6 – Factory of the Future: Human + Machine
Robotics, cobots, machine design, predictive maintenance, digital twins, increasing machine autonomy, “lights-out” manufacturing, worker retaining, and new occupations.

Case Study #7 – Education & Job Market: Preparing the New Mankind
Curriculum redesign, AI-assisted education, apprenticeships, vocational and technical skills, lifelong learning, promoting on developing wisdom, introduce humanity, and emphasizing humility.

Case Study #8 – Healthcare: The Machine Meets the Body
AI-assisted diagnosis, medical imaging, robotic-assisted surgeries, wearable devices, remote patient monitoring, personalized and precision medicine, digital twins, smart hospitals, and AI-assisted drug research.

These are the technologies transforming industry. We are studying how far they will take us and asking the question: What choices should human beings make along the way? We have many questions that are waiting for our further explorations.

Can intelligent robots restore manufacturing competitiveness while creating worthwhile roles for human beings?

For instance, healthcare leaders needn’t ask whether AI will replace doctors. We should ask how AI can extend our medical capability without diminishing human judgement and compassion.

Education can become the most important area for transformation. If machines can become increasingly intelligent, what should we teach human beings that machines cannot—or should not provide?

I am fascinated by what these technologies can accomplish, but I am not convinced that everything that is technologically possible is necessarily the desirable answer. Therefore, rather than predict the future, I would like to invite our readers, and various professionals to participate in this study to examine the choices before us.

Remember Industrial Revolution 4.0 is not one destination; it is a collection of choices. Collectively, I am asking my working committees of engineers, manufacturers, doctors, educators, and other professionals to take part in this approach.

Industry 4.0 is asking what intelligent machines can do, and our study to explore what we human beings should do with them.

Now we are entering into the Age of Artificial Intelligence in Industry 4.0, which will take us to do the study on different schedules and extend beyond our July 2026 issue, then move on to our January and July 2027 issues until we have completed the full study.

Words for Thoughts

This is a very big project study, and I don’t want its purpose to slip from us. I want to state the following message very clear, and we must observe them closely:

Machines may become faster, AI may become more intelligent, robots may become more capable, but human beings must never become less important.

I would like to use the song: “We Can Work It Out” as the theme song of this project. It was released by the Beatles in December 1965, and at that time I was only a teenager. More than sixty years later, its simple message still speaks to me:

“We can work it out.”

The song reminds us of hope, cooperation, patience, understanding, reconciliation and kindness.

In fact, we do not need to know everything, but we have to have the willingness to learn, the humility to change, and the determination to work things out together.

Industrial Revolution 4.0 will bring extraordinary opportunities, but it will also bring disruption and uncertainty. We should neither blindly embrace every new technology nor simply resist change because we are afraid of it. We need to know what is happening, prepare ourselves for it, share its benefits as widely as possible, and make certain that technology progress continues to respect humanity.

No country, industry, company or individual can meet all these challenges alone. We need cooperation across borders, generations, professions and cultures.

As we join our hands and take the path forward a better tomorrow, let us keep the four words before us:
Technology – Intelligence – Resilience – Humanity

Let’s make sure that we will observe Humanity together.