The set of technologies and processes that has been called the 4th Industrial Revolution, or fourth wave, represents a profound transformation in the way we produce and consume. In 2011, the German government led a project with the aim of creating the foundations on which the so-called smart factory would operate.
This type of production unit allows industrial productivity to multiply many times over with the use of increasingly less human resources, for example, and the potential elimination of dirty and costly processes.
The virtualization of simulations allows processes related to prototype testing — which, as a rule, represent about half of the efforts spent in a conventional machine production unit — to be carried out in environments controlled by the software.
Considering the part that only involves hardware, the parts are already identified and tested, and the possibilities of failures in production engineering become practically zero.
According to the 1st FIESP Notebook on Advanced Manufacturing and Industry 4.0, published in the second half of 2016, the fourth Industrial Revolution has the highest level of technological complexity in history.
Scaling and widespread use of new technologies is one of the challenges that large organizations face today. We have in our favor, also according to the same publication, the fact that in Brazil there are branches of the main companies at the forefront of this revolution in the world.
We are not aware of the extraordinary impact that this issue will have in the medium and long term, but it challenges us to a new level of planning and a much more accurate vision of the challenges that await us, whether in the field of production or employment. .
It is not possible to guarantee what type of skills will stand out in the short term, but we are sure that new professional profiles are being created and adaptations will be necessary to respond to such changes.
Due to the transformations we experience daily, the differences between industry and services have become less and less relevant. New technologies will enable greater equality.
All that is needed is for opportunities to be created so that women can, for example, have more access to careers in this sector, considering that today there is a small percentage of women participating in higher education courses in the area of Information Technology, according to a study presented by the Brazilian Computing Society in 2014, only 15,27%.
In this way, among many other aspects, the 4th Industrial Revolution can play an even more preponderant role in achieving goals related to the reduction of greenhouse gases, helping to comply with what is established by each country in the Paris Agreement, through, for example, reduction in travel due to communication, which is very developed, and also in compliance with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda.
The fourth wave is all about sustainable development, and every day we are writing this story that has everything to be successful and remembered in the not too distant future by our descendants as the moment when together we finally saved the planet from warming globalization and inequality through a more humane revolution.
**Article originally published in Folha de S.Paulo, on November 25, 2017.
