The road from Industrie 4.0 to Infrastructure 4.0 – digital innovations make their way from our factories into our cities

Anyone who spent time in Hannover at the end of April had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the future. You may think it an unlikely place to find the future, but once a year Hannover becomes a hotbed for the latest trends in artificial intelligence, intelligent automation and digital factories. The place where the great minds and machines of industry meet and where innovation takes center stage.

Competition is a great driving force for innovation. And nowhere is competition more intense than in the industrial world, where there is a constant need to be better, faster, and more flexible and to do more with less. This need has inspired some of the most innovative developments we see happening today. Digital enterprises that practically run themselves. Personalized products in batch sizes of one. Products that tell machines how to make them and send back data to improve future designs. Machines that improve their operation through machine learning.

Translating Industrie 4.0 into infrastructure

If Hannover is the place for the hottest ideas in industry, then Asia is the place for cities. It’s therefore fitting that I will be joining the World Cities Summit in Suzhou, China, this week and the McKinsey Global Infrastructure Initiative in Singapore later this month. Infrastructure leaders and innovators from around the world will gather to discuss how to design, build, operate and finance infrastructure projects in the future. The question of how we can speed up infrastructure delivery and improve asset utilization has never been more important.

Cities, which are the engines of economic growth, often compete with each other and face pressures similar to those above: the need to be better, faster, and more flexible and to do more with less. By 2025, 60 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. Instead of traffic-congested cities with unhealthy levels of pollution, we need to create environments that are good for people and for business.

The nuts and bolts of infrastructure provide the cornerstones for society: road and rail networks, water supply, electrical grids, buildings, and communication lines – today, to a large extent, they act independently of each other and with low levels of automation.

The technology behind smart cities

Slowly, we are starting to see some of the digital innovations in industry being applied to infrastructure. Advanced data analytics are being used to optimize infrastructure services. Digital twins and simulation software are helping design better buildings and more resilient grids. Transport service providers are being integrated to optimize capacity. All in all, IoT technologies offer huge potential to address infrastructure challenges, but ready access to resources and expertise will be essential.

Here IoT platforms can help. MindSphere, which was a highlight from Siemens at Hannover Fair, offers both connectivity and a range of industrial applications so that any enterprise, regardless of industry or size, can begin analyzing data to optimize their operations. Similarly cities and infrastructure operators can develop IoT applications to relieve traffic congestion, conserve water and energy and improve infrastructure services.

If Hannover was the place to see what the future of Industry 4.0 looks like, then let’s make Asia the place where Infrastructure 4.0 begins to take shape.

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