The only impossible journey is the one you never begin

PROLOGUE

We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.

This Fourth Industrial Revolution is being driven by a staggering range of new technologies that are blurring the boundaries between people, the internet, and the physical world. It’s a convergence of the digital, physical, and biological spheres.

In his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation describes an industrial revolution as the appearance of “new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world that trigger a profound change in economic and social structures.” He asserts that there are four distinct periods of industrial revolution throughout history, including the one we’re beginning right now.

As Chandra Brown, the former CEO of MxD asserted: “Transforming U.S. manufacturing involves a combination of advancing technology, supporting the workforce, and bringing together the right combination of players in the public and private sectors to take meaningful action. Prioritizing these recommendations will enable the U.S. to overcome persistent barriers as well as the more acute challenges posed by the pandemic.”

In Part 3 of our theme on Everything Connected, we define our progression as a company in two aspects – building robust ecosystems for Industry and Services 5.0 and creating compelling solutions, products and services that enthrall and excite our customers.

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS

Industrial revolution refers to a set of technologies that dramatically amplify the productivity of people, changing everything from longevity and quality of life to where and how people, work and mingle. As depicted in the diagram above, we have undergone four Industrial Revolutions (IR) and are on the brink of embarking on the Fifth (Industry and Services 5.0) – each version brings more automation and more tools into the mix but also increasing the complexity of managing and maintaining the systems.

1. The First Industrial Revolution was the Age of Mechanical Production where we moved from an agrarian society to a urban centric production basis beyond the needs of agriculture. This was facilitated by the invention of steam engines and electricity.

2. The Second Industrial Revolution was the Age of Science and Mass Production where we forayed into the different disciplines of science: physics, chemistry, math, and space, and also harmonized assembly lines so that we could create products at scale.

3. In the Third Industrial Revolution we used digital technologies to facilitate communication, just-in-time processes, and real time interactions to optimize the producer-customer experience.

4. The Fourth Industrial Revolution(Industry 4.0) can be described as the advent of “cyber-physical systems” involving entirely new capabilities for people and machines. While these capabilities are reliant on the technologies and infrastructure of the Third Industrial Revolution, the Fourth Industrial Revolution represents entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies and even our human bodies. Industry 4.0 brought about a paradigm shift in manufacturing technologies and processes. It focused on optimizing the use of machines, sensors and automation while leveraging cloud technologies and big data analytics. It unleashed new levels of efficiency, productivity, and quality. New disruptive technologies, such as IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Blockchain and 3D printing, are driving the next wave of manufacturing.

5. Industry and Services 5.0 is the next leap forward. It is the convergence of industrial internet of things (IIoT), artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), advanced robotics, cloud computing and cognitive computing in conjunction with human centered solutions to generate products that are mass customizable, usable, and sustainable – products that have utilitarian value and can be reconfigured or reconstituted – thus making them resilient and sustainable. These technologies enable new capabilities in terms of sensing, analyzing, optimizing, predicting, and actuating – what we call Actionable Intelligence.

The vision of Industry and Services 5.0 recognizes the power of industry to achieve societal goals beyond jobs and growth, to become a resilient provider of prosperity by making production respect the boundaries of the planet and place the well-being of the human at the center of the process. It emphasizes on sustainability, human-centricity, and resilience along with all the tenets that defined Industry 4.0 and the revolutions prior to it. It moves focus from solely shareholder value to stakeholder enablement, for all concerned. Further, it emphasizes on the role of industry as a provider of prosperity and societal well-being and is a mechanism to achieve thriving and resilient communities and societies. Industry 4.0 was about creating a technology-driven competitive advantage; Industry and Services 5.0 is about creating a socially and environmentally driven competitive advantage.

Here is a link to our Cybernetic Shift podcast on the phases of the Industrial Revolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmIeonAu3DU 

OUR PREMISE

Appropriate definition and use of technology and services is important so as not to over engineer aspects of the design and build to manage industrial automation and urban mobility, and to increase quality of life for citizens. We have observed the impact of electrification and technology on mobility and have proposed an approach which advances not just technology, but innovation, design, art, and aesthetics. We propose a balanced approach, where technology progression and innovation & design advance in lockstep with one feeding from and using the other.

We plan to create solutions, products and services that showcases how the integration between physical, virtual, and human artifacts will turn the Internet of Things (IoT) into a Platform of Things (PoT) that can be helpful in areas ranging from Biometrics to Safety. Our CONNECT-DETECT-PROTECT protocol for Smart Monitoring that we are developing is a testament to this wherein we are creating a comprehensive data fabric using cybernetics to enable worker safety, operational efficiency and predictive analytics both in industrial settings and in infrastructure builds.

We will achieve this by building self-assembling, self-replicating processes that are modular in which parts fit like puzzle pieces. There are many parts in this machine, and they all must fit correctly and work together in order for it to run. The small components look similar, but when assembled together, are able to form shapes that create a dynamic environment and experience. This in essence is the basis for self-replication in Non-linear dynamics and the theory of chaos, and the fundamentals behind Gestalt.

OUR DIFFERENTIATOR

Our mantra is to make, manage, move, market, and maintain.

Numorpho Cybernetic Systems (NUMO) is in the business of building a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) ecosystem in Industry and Services 5.0. Called Mantra M5, it will help orchestrate the activities of make, manage, move, market and maintain to enable intelligent engineering of processes. We will enable infrastructures, manage adaptive engineering and smart manufacturing, harmonize processes, and create intelligent, connected, and sustainable products.

We enable the creation of custom products and solutions @ scale with minimal reliance on offshore manufacturing and supply chain. We do this using Adaptive Engineering, Additive and Smart Manufacturing, AI/ML, Blockchain and other emergent technologies, and by proving and improving the synthetic ecosystem we are building by validating it against the smart products we are creating.

OUR FIRST PaaS ECOSYSTEM

Merging Additive Manufacturing, Ecommerce and understanding the implications of Supply Chain, we are in the process of building our first Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering – an Omni-channel Connected and Adaptive Marketplace (OCCAM).

This platform will appropriately connect innovators and customers with providers having industrial design expertise, 3D printer OEMS and contract manufacturing facilities to enable production in small or large scale. It will have built in intelligence to initiate the appropriate handshake and coordination of quoting, contract negotiations and material procurement and will provide the basis for the next generation flexible ERP, CRM and SCM systems merged into one.

Use cases for Contract Manufacturing, B2C2B Commerce and Fast Fashion have already been defined and we are in the process of constructing the platform using Microsoft toolsets – Azure, Dynamics, Power, Cognitive Toolkit and utilizing OpenAI for the intelligence.

We will also be utilizing the Digital Inventory Service (DIS) created by Wurth Additive Group, our key partner to enable additive manufacturing transactions by creating a recipe for the digital part file that is managed throughout the process of the contract.

OUR SMART PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

In defining the ecosystem, we at Numorpho Cybernetic Systems (NUMO) have also built the basis for several products and solutions in the electric mobility (e-mobility) space. Some of them will be unveiled in the next couple of months. This will ratify our master plan in a progressive list of MVPs that will intend to prove and improve our solution methodology for defining the next iteration of the industrial revolution: Industry and Services 5.0.

For electric mobility-based solutions, we will follow our unique approach to innovation and advancement to provide for the next experience in urban travel. We will discuss the intersection between urban mobility, transport, and the environment while applying a data analysis theory and methodology to explore our current challenges.

Our basis for “electric mobility” will consist of:

• Micro-mobility – the synthesis for robotic movement, electric bikes, for narrow/thin transportation,
• Macro-mobility – the plan for transit vans, mobile homes, campers, and RVs, and
• Hyper-mobility – the modality for 3D transport using drones, air taxis and future air transportation utilizing eVTOLs

along with the infrastructure to support them and the adjacent services that will be needed to provide for and utilize them.

These will be complemented with AI and support compliance like versions of current FAA models for regulating, arranging, and distributing travel channels in the designated space to minimize collisions and ensuring safety while accepting limitations of speed in urban ecology. Just like side roads, boulevards, highways, parkways and freeways, there will be different channels of urban travel channels.

We will chart a future for entirely new forms of urban transportation and their adjacencies to progress in a balanced trajectory that manages art & aesthetics, math & science, engineering & technology, regulations & ethics, and proceeds forward using a guided blueprint to achieve a full understanding of the knowns and unknowns.

On March 2, 2022, we celebrated the 5^th year anniversary of mHUB. We also passed another milestone – mHUB member companies and alumni have surpassed $1B in investments and exits for their innovative, high-growth hardtech solutions.

Which brings up a very important part of why we are in business. Our plan is for NUMO to be the leader in automating solutions – for manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation, mobility etc. It is great to be altruistic in our approach and that will also be part of our growing up. But for this and now we want to totally reshape our technological basis and for that we must be laser focused and dedicated in our expansion.

We are honored to be part of the mHUB family and plan to add to its long list of successes by quickly accelerating our growth and touching all aspects of hardtech to include innovation, smart manufacturing, and connected commerce.

SUMMARY

Every Industrial Revolution has created an inflection point in the arc of history and is now becoming less about what we can do and more about what we know. We should remember that all industrial revolutions are ultimately driven by the individual and collective choices of people. And it is not just the choices of the researchers, inventors and designers developing the underlying technologies that matter, but even more importantly those of investors, consumers, regulators, and citizens who adopt and employ these technologies in daily life.

Industry and Services 5.0 will be no different. In considering the three archetypal dimensions of Industry and Services 5.0 as a whole, we need to reflect on what each individual dimension means for different groups of people. And we need to be clear about how each of these groups can shape the future toward a more inclusive and sustainable world.

1. The first dimension is about technology. Here, the impact of Industry and Services 5.0 will be felt in terms of how technology is designed, created, used, and disposed of.
2. The second dimension is about the organization of work and life. Here, the impact of Industry and Services 5.0 will be felt in terms of how work is organized, how work and life are integrated, and how new forms of work are created.
3. The third dimension is about governance. Here, the impact of Industry and Services 5.0 will be felt in terms of how we make decisions about technology and work, how we regulate technology and work, and how we distribute the benefits and burdens of technology and work.

Each of these dimensions presents challenges and opportunities for different groups of people.

• For example, the technology dimension presents challenges for those who design and create technology, for those who use technology, and for those who are impacted by technology.
• The organization of work and life dimension presents challenges for those who work, for those who manage work, and for those who are not in work.
• The governance dimension presents challenges for those who make decisions about technology and work, for those who regulate technology and work, and for those who are impacted by decisions about technology and work.

In order to make Industry and Services 5.0 work for all, we need to consider the different perspectives of all these different groups of people. We need to design technology with all of these different groups in mind. We need to organize work and life in ways that work for all of these different groups. And we need to govern technology and work in ways that are inclusive of all of these different groups.*

As Schwab writes: “The new technology age, if shaped in a responsive and responsible way, could catalyze a new cultural renaissance that will enable us to feel part of something much larger than ourselves – a true global civilization. We can use the Fifth Industrial Revolution to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny.”

We, at NUMO are firmly committed to this adventure of the future, and it will be our endeavor to bring all of you along with us on this journey.

NITIN UCHIL Founder, CEO & Technical Evangelist

nitin.uchil@numorpho.com