Industry 4.0: Climate Revolution?

Augmenting sustainability alongside digital capabilities is an economic, competitive and global opportunity for India’s businesses, but regulations need to reflect intent

- Ruchika Shah

The first industrial revolution created modern industry, embracing machines, assembly lines, and factories in order to maximize production efficiencies. The second, third, and now fourth revolutions have brought innovations to refine these tools—with present-day factories and companies using automated machinery and millions of sensors that output data points for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to crunch. Machines today can not only be taught the task at hand but can also be used to learn the best way to perform it. We have come a full circle.

Industrial revolutions have gone down in history as milestones of human progress. Strong and efficient industries led to robust economies, wealth creation, scientific and technology prowess, better education, as well as more opportunities to succeed. Today, the world was able to come up with not just one but multiple Covid-19 vaccines in record time.

A little-known by-product of the first industrial revolution was environmentalism. “It was the first time that people had started living in concentrated cities, and they were getting sick as they had never been before as industries contaminated the air and water,” explains Mike Rosenberg, author, Strategy and Sustainability, and professor of the Practice of Management in Strategic Management Department, IESE Business School.

Every industrial age has made companies more efficient, productive, and profitable. The impact of industries on our environment, however, has continued unabated.