news desk: Of the world’s 114 smartest factories that deploy cutting edge Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, China owns a whopping 42. The US, only seven.
These factories – lighthouses in the World Economic Forum (WEF) parlance – will lead the world to tomorrow’s knowledge economy. A smart factory implements Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and advanced robotics to transform the manufacturing process,
value chains and business models. In a stiff competition, only a select group of leading companies have successfully deployed such technologies to qualify as lighthouses, symbolising the superpower race for supremacy in the emerging knowledge economy era. It is an existential question as to who will win this race.
