As we experience this exciting time in history, the 4th Industrial Revolution is happening all around us, without most people even knowing about it. Massive leaps forward are being made possible by the digital platform that the whole world is adopting.
But how did we get so far in the relatively short time of 200 years – in the span of a few generations?
It was only in the final years of the 18th century that the 1st Industrial Revolution began when steam power changed how things were made and transported. The invention and refinement of the steam engine and the use of hydraulic power enabled the economy to develop, and allowed people to move forward and experience growth and travel.
100 years later, in the 2nd Industrial Revolution, electricity facilitated assembly lines and mass production, sparking the consumer age and creating further opportunity for innovation and discovery.
The momentum continued when, at the beginning of the 1960s and throughout the 3rd Industrial Revolution, computing allowed machines and networks to spread to homes, schools, universities and workplaces, developing the potential for study and the exchange of ideas, promoting further advancement.
Each subsequent decade brought significant progress; semiconductors and mainframe computers in the 1960s, personal computers in the 1970s and 1980s and the internet in the 1990s.
The 4th Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, is upon us in this 21st century as we build even further on that foundation, with the potential to achieve exponential growth in what we are able to attain. Reaching across disciplines, we are now transferring technology between the physical, digital and biological domains.
Change is happening faster and new developments are spreading more quickly than ever. Cyber-physical systems are melding the physical and virtual worlds, using simulation and virtual reality and even creating Digital Twins.
All of this allows us to study and understand the world we are creating, speed up the design process and predict behavior, in order to boost productivity and prevent disaster.
In this way, simulation and scheduling software is an important part of our latest Industrial revolution, sitting comfortably alongside the other enablers:
| Additive ManufacturingAugmented Reality
Autonomous Robots Big Data |
Cloud ComputingCyber Security
System Itegration The Internet of Things (IoT) |
The perfect tool for the Smart Factory, Simio Simulation Software helps capitalize on the Industrial Revolution that is happening around us; improving agility, increasing productivity and mitigating risk as the next stages in the process of disruptive change unfold in our exciting new digital age.
Contact Simio today to speak with our Engineers about the Simio advantage.