The future of US manufacturing was the center of discussion at Forcam’s Smart Factory Symposium hosted at the Digital Manufacturing Design Innovation Institute in Chicago. The day-long conference addressed the new rules of Manufacturing 4.0, also known as Industry 4.0 or the Industrial Internet of Things.
In his keynote presentation, David R. Brousell, co-founder of the Manufacturing Leadership Council at Frost & Sullivan, explained we are in the middle of the fourth wave of industrial change. The first industrial revolution started in the 1780s with mechanization and line production, then evolved to mass production in the 1870s and eventually entered into the third stage in the 1960s with computer control and the introduction of automation.