Digital technologies and industrial transformations

Over the past few decades, ‘digital technology’ has shaped the so-called Third Industrial Revolution—the first in the nineteenth century being characterized by steam and water, and the second at the beginning of the twentieth century being based on electricity and the emergence of mass production. In his book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, suggests that it will be a further step in human production based on a complete integration between the cyber and physical dimensions. The fourth revolution has the potential to transform not only the way we produce and distribute things but also the dynamics of customer engagement, value creation, management, and regulation (Kagermann et al., 2013; Schwab, 2017a, 2017b). An historical account of the origins, history, and impact of cybernetics is beyond the scope and goals of this contribution (Ampère, 1843; Wiener, 1948a, 1948b; Simon, 1968). However, the idea of the new cyber-physical revolution or ‘Industry 4.0’ has been introduced, inspired by the transformations made in German manufacturing (Kagermann et al., 2013). Industry 4.0 has also been described as digital manufacturing, industrial Internet, smart industry, and smart manufacturing (Hermann et al., 2016; Nuccio & Guerzoni, 2019).