The manufacturing times, they are a-changing. Banish all thoughts of a factory floor that’s gloomy and dirty, populated with machines and busy workers fixed on the same repetitive task.

Factories of the now and not-too-distant future are visions of gleaming efficiency, positively humming as information is buzzed between machines which collaborate seamlessly together.This is all backed up by a techno-savvy workforce which brings production and data together, keeping connections around the globe in a perfect marriage of manufacturing and IT.

It is the smart factory. It is the dawning of the age of Industry 4.0.

Hang on a minute - what’s that? Not even the majority of manufacturing executives have heard of it but it’s the title that’s capturing the ongoing revolution in the sector, often partnered with another moniker: Internet of Things.

These are the days when those factories and plants which are hooked in to the internet are proving to be more efficient, more productive and, yes, even smarter than their non-connected and increasingly communications-isolated counterparts. Those in the know describe Industry 4.0 as the latest phase in manufacturing’s digitisation, a fast and sweeping change that’s being viewed as the fourth industrial revolution.

Industrially, things started with the Victorian-age move from farming to factory production while the arrival of steel in the 1850s saw the onset of the second industrial revolution, a time when mass production and electrically-powered factories came into their own.

The third happened much more within living memory, between the 1950s and ‘70s when digital technology began to take over from existing mechanical, electrical and analogue technologies.

With Industry 4.0, digital is well and truly taking hold.

Powerful systems are at our fingertips to process massive amounts of data and bring a fast revelation of insights which can be acted upon immediately, sensors can gather information of vital use to manufacturers and producers, communications infrastructures are now advanced - and secure - enough to be used by heavy industry. Touch interfaces and augmented reality systems are bringing digital instructions into physical reality, such as robotics and 3D printing.

When it comes to 3D printing, that’s coming on in leaps and bounds of its own, as printers’ abilities grow to handle differing materials, including production-grade plastics and metals, to create final products.While 3D printing was first used by engineers and designers to create, form and fit testing prototypes more quickly and cheaply - rapid prototyping - before gearing up a factory to produce the actual item, their uses are now morphing toward functional testing of prototypes under working conditions and the manufacture of final products.Printers of the 3D variety are certainly moving out of the R&D lab and on to the factory floor, so quickly in fact that it’s predicted that by 2020, 50% will be creating final products instead of prototypes.

The rise of the machines is also an inextricable part of manufacturing’s transformation. With smart factories comes intelligent automation as forward-thinking enterprises look to for robotic and automated technologies which encompass elements of predictive analytics and cognitive computing to help them compete globally; combatting the threat posed by low labour costs in other parts of the world.

So change is not just coming, change is upon the world of manufacturing and is destined to affect every corner of the factory and right across the supply chain. It’s not as fast as the arrival of steam power or robotics which saw pretty much 90% of equipment replaced overnight, but it is happening at a fair pace.

Some of our manufacturers have their fingers on the pulse. A study which quizzed 300 sector leaders found that 48% considered themselves ready for Industry 4.0 while 78% of suppliers said they were prepared, with many estimating that up to 50% of today’s machines will need upgrading or replacing.But that’s still more than half who need to be aware of the emerging technologies. Many have been in the pipeline for a while and have now reached a point where their lower cost and higher reliability makes them an increasingly sensible option for more and more industrial applications.

You say you want a revolution? Well here it is in Industry 4.0 which is destined to change global competitiveness, restructure production and redefineboth manufacturing processes and what a product is.