One way that I find very interesting to describe how industry has evolved over the past 2 and a half centuries is through the metaphor of the Taylor’s Bathtub, described by Niels Pflaeging, in his book Organize for Complexity: How to Get Life Back into Work to Build the High-Performance Organization (Lightning Source 2014).
This schematization describes the transition
- from an Craft Economy where thinkers and doers were the same person
- to one of the Industrial Economy where there is a separation between “Thinkers” and Doers.”
- and finally to an Agile Creative Economy where thinkers and doers return to working together but as a team.
Within the creative economy, the single person is inadequate to deal alone with the challenge of developing products that integrate different technical disciplines and require unprecedented cooperation so teamwork becomes a necessity.
Compared to Niels Pflaeging’s schematization, I would add Mass Customization as a distinguishing element of the Creative Economy.
It is worth mentioning that Mass Customization differs from Mass Configuration in that it is the development of a product that has characteristics of uniqueness because it is customized ad hoc with respect to the configuration among a finite number of combinations of the configuration options provided.
L’economia industriale, secondo questa rappresentazione, contiene sicuramente al suo interno almeno i primi 3 paradigmi industriali
- 1.0 mechanization thanks to the steam engine, with the machines arranged along the line of power.
- 2.0 mass production thanks to electric motors, which allowed machines and assembly lines to be arranged according to the flow of work.
- 3.0 automation of machines with computers, which has enabled a sharp increase in productivity through automatic operation.
And where to place the fourth industrial paradigm?
- 4.0 data collection from the real world and cyber-physical systems or CPS, which enable synergistic interaction between people and machines.
This fourth paradigm offers the promise of greater efficiency through digital connectivity and artificial intelligence.
It is also accompanied by a digital transformation that impacts the way products are developed.
I would feel like placing it only partly within the Creative Economy because it makes Mass Customization technically possible but without giving an answer to the creative part.
Creativity sees the people in the team at the center, and this is where the new paradigm of Industry 5.0 comes to us, taking advantage of the previous one and complementing it.
In short, Industry 4.0 has’ been born very recently and is already surpassed by Industry 5.0 because the latter is human-centered, sustainable and resilient. These elements make it suitable for today’s VUCA mode.
The topic is so interesting because it ties in with new ways of working Agile ways of working in the factory as well.
I agree with Esben H. Østergaard, chief technology officer at Universal Robots, that Industry 5.0 is the return of the human touch in manufacturing.
The Agile approach in the factory enables manual skills as an enabler of creativity, something well known to artists, designers, craftsmen, experimenters….
I will return to this topic with the new ways of working that integrate the factory and offices.
