The fourth industrial revolution. After the one of steam power, electricity and informatics, the western world is going through a new phase of industrial automation, accompanied by new production technologies, new working rules and mainly new business models. A technological and organisational transformation whose outcomes are not completely visible yet.

Industry 4.0 leverages three factors:

Smart production, means new productive technologies allowing collaboration between people, machines and tools; Smart service, building IT architectures allowing a better synergy between systems and external hubs (our speciality); and Smart Energy, lower energy consumption and more performing procedures, to endorse sustainability.

Long-term vision. Strategic positioning. Integrated design capacity. Open to the external world. Expertise and, once again, expertise.

At the core of Industry 4.0 are the physical systems linked by informatics systems, interacting and cooperating: decentralisation and collaboration are the pillars of Industry 4.0. The fourth industrial revolution will concern the manufacturing sector and articulate the so-called habilitating technologies. According to a study by Boston Consulting, these habilitating technologies are nine:

• Advanced manufacturing solution: interconnected and modular systems allowing flexibility and performance, in particular advanced robotics, collaborative robots and cobot.
• Additive manufacturing: additive production systems increasing the efficiency of materials’ use.
• Augmented reality visualisation to better guide operators in their daily tasks.
• A simulation between interconnected machines to optimise processes.
• Integration and exchange of information horizontally and vertically between all the participants of the productive process.
• Industrial internet: communication between the different elements of the production chain, internal and external to the business.
• Implementation of cloud technologies, cloud computing and external data analysis services.
• Informatics safety, information and system safety
• Big Data Analytics: open systems to manage a massive amount of data to extract useful information for the business in terms of forecasts or market predictions.