Is it really a revolution?
We made the business case for Industry 4.0. And then we sized up our investment universe here and here. But the common thread in these worldview articles was the availability of technology necessary for a revolution. It occurred to us that just because the technology is available doesn’t necessarily mean its useful. We got so caught up in “we can finally do this…!”, that we forgot to ask: “should we do it?”. Is it a solution in need of a problem?
To be fair, we pointed out some of the reasons it makes sense for firms to embrace Industry 4.0. This worldview article revisits some of that, but it primarily attempts to answer a simple question: should firms actually invest in “the revolution”?