Rarely has industrial automation changed at such an exponential rate. The combination of various technology trends has propelled enterprises into Industry 4.0 so fast that Frost & Sullivan has already delivered an Industry 5.0 blueprint to guide the journey.
Edge-and-cloud integration, converged development environments, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous production are far more than conceptual. These technological innovations are already happening.
“This is a unique time in our industry,” explained Cyril Perducat, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Rockwell Automation, who shared the automation supplier’s plans for the immediate future at Automation Fair 2021 in Houston. “The future is a trajectory, a path that we are already on. When I think of Industry 4.0, which was first coined in 2011, there is certainly a lot of learning over the past 10 years of what Industry 4.0 can deliver. And COVID has accelerated many of those dimensions.”
