- When I was in elementary school,
the textbooks talked about the industrial revolution
as an event that happened around 1800,
when we invented technologies
like the steam engine and railroads, but in 2017,
Klaus Schwab,
the founder of the World Economic Forum,
published a book called 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution".
And it changed the way that a lot
of us think about technology.
Schwab argued
that the industrial revolution was actually just the first
in a series of major transformations that business
and society have undergone.
The second industrial revolution happened around 1900
with the introduction of electricity and assembly lines.
The third industrial revolution started in the 1960s
with computers and semiconductors and then the internet.
And right now we're witnessing a fourth industrial
revolution because there are a lot
of powerful new technologies coming together
around us that are transforming our society in huge ways.
These are technologies like 5G communications,
sensors and the internet of things,
artificial intelligence, gene sequencing, nanotechnology
and more.
They're changing what's possible
and they're changing our customers' expectations.
We're at the beginning
of a new business era called industry 4.0
and our supply chains need to get ready for it.
Supply chain management
isn't just about the movement of physical products.
It's about delivering all
of the things that our customers value,
which often includes services and digital products too.
We also need to think
about how companies exchange money and share information,
because new technologies are changing lots
of things about how money, materials
and information flow through the supply chain.
The Singapore economic development board has
developed a tool called the smart industry readiness index.
That explains four steps that companies need to take
in order to undergo a digital transformation
and prepare for industry 4.0.
Learn key concepts and build
a common language for alignment,
evaluate the state of existing facilities
and the company's readiness level for industry 4.0,
architect a comprehensive transformation strategy
and an implementation roadmap,
and deliver impact and sustain transformation initiatives.
I've designed this course to help you
and your colleagues with that first step.
Learning about the key industry 4.0 technologies
so that you have a common baseline.
We'll start by looking
at the technologies that are already common
in supply chains.
Then we'll look at some
of the newest technologies that are likely to
have a big impact in the next few years.
And finally, we'll look
at how you can use all of these technologies
to reimagine the ways that your company creates value
and how you connect with your customers and suppliers.