Advanced design-driven approaches for an Industry 4.0 framework: The human-centred dimension of the digital industrial revolution

Abstract

There are many ways to name the transformation linked to the digital economy: Industry 4.0, Convergence, Digital Revolution. In this contribution I try to systematize the role of design in this transformation. So, alongside the enabling technologies we support the centrality and innovative potential activators of approaches that are driven by contemporary cultures design. The contribu-tion provides a map of the playing field for this transformation by highlighting the dual and simultaneous ongoing transforma-tion and the connections between technology and design practices. The work ends with a detailed list of potential that can be activated using integrations between enabling and activating approach technologies. The Industry 4.0 phenomenon 1 Contemporary economic literature maintains that the process of substantial and pervasive change in the general features of the advanced capitalist production model started a few years ago (Holzhauser and Schalla, 2016). After the revolution generated by the intensive use of the movement of water and steam, after the revolution supported by the discovery and intensive use of electrici-ty and, finally, after the revolution generated by Fordism, the production chain and the scientification of industrial production (classical industry), economists describe the moment we are now living as a " digital tsunami " (Bergami, 2016). For this reason the context in which we are operat-ing is called the fourth industrial revolution, and particu-larly with respect to the strategic industrial plan launched at the beginning of this decade in Germany, this impet-uous and substantial rethinking of production processes can be summarised under the title Industry 4.0. The origin of this process is attributable to the situa-tion in which a high number of technologies, due to var-ious factors, have simultaneously become cost effective, minimally invasive and quantitatively widespread. We call them " enabling " technologies, in the sense that it is thanks to an integrated and simultaneous use of some of these technologies that the production process acquires highly innovative features and change is enabled. According to estimates by Gartner, over the coming years the objects connected digitally to manufacturers through built-in sen-sors will grow from 4.9 billion in 2015, to over 6.3 in 2016, reaching 20.7 billion in 2020. Already today the advanced economies in Europe are measured in terms of the degree of absorption of this revolution through an indicator called DESI (Digital Economy and Society Index) that highlights, for example, that there already exists a large gap between the needs and availability of business operators able to deal with this kind of challenge: operators that are able to understand the effects, scope, speed and use both in the production system and in society.