Interview: Dassault Systèmes' Gian Paolo Bassi on the fifth industrial revolution

Industrial revolutions are like buses these days. You wait for decades for the next one to come along, and then they arrive at ever-decreasing intervals. And just when you’re getting used to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the fifth materialises. 

Industry 5.0 (or even 5IR) started in around 2020, but its ‘present and ongoing status’ only really took hold when industry commentators started to analyse the post-Covid fallout. This was when the 4IR obsession with the ‘datafication of everything’ matured into applying this resource to meaningful human contexts. The game-changer was artificial intelligence.

Speaking at this year’s edition of the Dassault Systèmes conference 3DExperience World, EVP of 3DExperience Works Gian Paolo Bassi described the transition to IR5 as a post-Covid realisation that industry needs to put the ‘human experience front and centre’ in the industrial process. It’s a coalition of ideas, he says, ‘a cultural change’ focused on interconnecting AI, automation and digital threads. The emphasis is not just about providing better productivity for engineers, but on reshaping industrial sustainability for the future.

This change is reflected in Dassault Systèmes’  three-decade old Solidworks brand’s recent unveiling of its Gen 7 philosophy that Bassi explains as being based on the ‘need to see what it is beyond the current generation’. Part of his job is to assess technology tipping points that trigger ‘a change in the strategy. We believe that definitely AI is at that maturity level now. It was time for us to react.’ Under the banner of ‘3D Univ+rses’ (the clunky plus symbol should be read as an ‘e’), the company’s vision for modulating from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 centres on multiple generative AI technologies aimed at improving the ‘daily lives of consumers, patients and citizens’.

Solidworks describes its new initiative as offering users the opportunity to ‘generate rather than consume’, and ‘to give back to the planet as much as they take from it’. All of these ideas are central to the IR5 playbook where the ‘experience economy’ of a decade ago ‘now intersects with the sustainability imperative to create the generative economy.’ In another decade, speculates Bassi, there will be another tipping point on the scale of AI, ‘and when we see it, that will become part of our strategy’.

‘Think back to the 1990s’, says Bassi. ‘Back then, design accuracy was the bottleneck of most companies. Prototyping and field testing was necessary, but it was also time and resource consuming. 3D CAD changed all that. Followed by simulation, data management and digital manufacturing.’ But in the context of Industry 5.0, ‘you need constant and secure access to up-to-date information and solutions around the clock and around the world.’ Today, says Bassi, ‘there is tremendous pressure to make better, cheaper products faster. The customer wants personalised, connected and sustainable experiences with transparent information about material sourcing and labour standards. At the same time companies are facing strong headwinds: labour shortages, supply chain disruptions, rising costs and cyber threats. On top of that, there’s the daunting task of mastering the advances in science and technology.’

Bassi thinks the first significant differentiation between Industry 5.0 and its predecessors is that it considers societal consequences. ‘That’s relevant because people work in industry, and they form the society we live in’. He thinks this more human-centric approach had started to gain traction with Industry 4.0 and had already started to become ‘part of the directive for CEOs all over the world’. But when in 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic altered the landscape, this meant that ‘everybody started to question the overall context in which industry progress happens.’ There was global realisation that there was a new world order in which established societal norms had become precarious, leading to a focus on sustainability. ‘We needed to rethink our industrial values. We needed to look more towards the benefits of automation. We needed to put the human back at the centre of everything.’

This rethink will also have spin-off benefits for the engineer, says Bassi, who predicts that 5.0 will deliver more scope for innovation as a result of advances in AI. Looking back to when he was at engineering school in the 1980s, he recalls how ‘I was told that 70 per cent of the work of an engineer was to find information that at the time was only available in books. Okay, right now is a little bit faster. But that is not creativity, right?’ Instead, the soul of the engineer, he continues, lies in their ability to solve problems related to ‘human centric industrial revolution, sustainability, recyclability, better materials and so on’. Too much of their time has historically been taken up with the ‘numbing amount of work’ that has gone into iterative tasks such as creating multiple versions of documentation and drawing sets.

‘That’s not problem solving’, says Bassi who has been an advocate for the efficiencies of CAD for over a quarter of a century. Under the 3D Univ+rses architecture engineers will be able to exploit AI enabled design tools like Solidworks to create innovative projects such as the Boston Dynamics robotic dog Spot that has been deployed on oil rig inspection programmes globally. ‘After hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in 2022, Spot was also used to assess damage and to help relief workers to prioritise their intervention and bring help where it was needed most.’ The cyber-canine has also been used in archaeological applications such as inspecting the ruins of Pompeii that was buried in volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Because more than half of the world’s population lives today ‘in the megalopolis or large urban centres. Everything we do now has to be sustainable’, and the resulting imbalances compared with previous centuries need to be factored in into global planning: ‘how we blend progress and the innovation society.’ Chief concerns are no longer sustainability in the sense of pollution and resource management, ‘but the fundamental effect of industry on society. So, when we talk about automation, we need to balance it with the employment factor. And employment right now is going to be different and change in stages. Population is ageing, especially in the Western world, and with the ageing population, we are losing skills. Today there is a different thinking, and there is this new concept of circular economy, where you need to consume what you produce locally. This is going to change the way we plan our future: how we plan our industrialisation.”

Due to its human centricity and parallel concentration on sustainability, Bassi thinks that the underlying concepts related to the Fifth Industrial Revolution are broader than they were for previous incarnations. He sees 5IR as a cultural phenomenon informally codified by a spectrum of influences rather than the current thinking of the industrial sector. One of the benefits of the way we think today is that ‘right now the ability to share ideas – good or bad – is enormous. But we are very lucky in that good ideas resonate and get picked up quickly.’ He attributes the trend in the twenty-first century to issue a new IR version number every few decades to ‘the push of society towards more sustainable things. I mean you see that right now. The younger generation has been screaming for us to make sure that the world that we are creating for their kids is as good or even better than the one we have today.’

FIRST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - (c.1760-1840)

James Watt’s steam engine provides reliable power. Iron production and use of coal enable construction of railways. Canals connect cities and boost economies. Factories transform production of goods. Breakthroughs in mechanical engineering promote machine building.

SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - (c.1870-1914)

Mass-produced steel leads to advances in construction, machinery and transportation. Development of electrical systems improves manufacturing systems and transforms urban life. Innovations include electric telegraph, assembly line, chemical processes and cars.

THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, ‘Information Age’ - (c.1950s-2000s)

Advent of digital. Development of internet technology, computers and other technologies transforms manufacturing and communications. The rise of renewable energy. Invention of the transistor. Digitalisation of manufacturing. Space exploration. Biotechnology. Robotics.

FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - ‘Industry 4.0, 4IR’ (c.2000-2020)

Rapid shift towards automation in manufacturing. Standalone renewable energy systems. Cyber-physical systems, Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Touch interfaces and virtual reality. Big data.

FIFTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION - ‘Industry 5.0, 5IR’ (c.2020-future)

Integration of many of the key features of 4IR into workplace processes while developing human-machine collaboration, human-centric approaches, sustainability and leveraging advanced and emerging technologies such as AI, robotics, big data analysis. Smart factories.