After having to postpone our planned celebrations earlier in the year, we’re excited to announce that this year’s celebration of the 2020 Distinguished Manufacturing Alumni Award winner, Dr Ayotunde Coker (MSc Engineering and Management of Manufacturing Systems 1989) will be taking place online on 1 December. Ayotunde is Managing Director and CEO of Rack Centre, and has over 30 years’ international experience.
Alongside celebrating his achievements, the virtual event will also give attendees the chance to hear a lecture from Ayotunde: ‘The fourth industrial revolution and 21st-century industries.’
In his lecture, Ayotunde will discuss the underpinning infrastructures of the fourth industrial revolution, the new and transformative business models and the new opportunities that reduce the thresholds of access to innovative technology.
We live in the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, also referred to as Industry 4.0 or 4IR. There have been three industrial other revolutions – the first saw the mechanisation of industry through steam engine technology. The second was characterised by electricity, oil and gas transportation, telegraph and telephony. The third industrial revolution showed an accelerated pace of change, featuring the transistor, the micro-chip and the emergence of sophisticated computing technology. In the early 1990s, the advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web and mobile 2g analogue telephony transitioning into digital, marked the beginning of the transition into Industry 4.0.
Industry 4.0 is characterised by the availability of high-speed broadband and the world being massively interconnected via undersea cables – enabling a new age of transmission of data. This has been underpinned by the emergence of mega data centres, hosting the service to process ‘big data’ in real time, with significant energy requirements to cool their servers.
We now have social media, video streaming, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and blockchain – all enabled by video mobile 4G LTE, high-speed broadband and high-performance smart phones. These technologies have resulted in new models for optimising established business value chains – opening new business value chains and solutions to facilitate access to advanced technologies, enabling amazing innovations that were previously only accessible to rich multi-nationals. Where previously companies had to build their own international networks and expensive data centres and equipment to automate, Cloud services, shared services, Internet Exchanges and colocation data centres reduce the entry threshold to advanced technologies and make them accessible for companies of all sizes.
Alongside painting the picture of Industry 4.0, its infrastructures and business models, Ayotunde’s lecture will also put into perspective the impact of Industry 4.0 technologies such as Big Data and Blockchain when it comes to shrinking the thresholds of access to advanced technologies for industry. It will also close with a perspective on Africa – a continent which is generally regarded as being the next frontier for growth and technology innovation.
Register now for the Distinguished Manufacturing Alumni Lecture 2020 on 1 December.