Manufacturing  4.0 is also refereed to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

It is the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector, driven by disruptive trends including the rise of data and connectivity, analytics, human-, and improvements in robotics and machine interaction.

Manufacturing 4.0 has significant implications for brands across industries. By implementing advanced technologies and data-driven processes, manufacturers can produce products faster, with greater precision, and at lower costs. Here are some ways that Manufacturing 4.0 can benefit brands:

-Faster time-to-market:

With the help of digital technologies, manufacturers can shorten the product development cycle and bring new products to market faster. This means that brands can respond more quickly to changing customer demands and stay ahead of the competition.

-Improved quality control:

By integrating sensors and data analytics into the manufacturing process, manufacturers can detect and address quality issues in real-time. This helps ensure that products meet or exceed customer expectations, reducing the risk of product recalls and negative brand reputation.

-Customization and personalization:

The use of advanced technologies such as 3D printing and machine learning enables manufacturers to produce products that are tailored to individual customer needs and preferences. This allows brands to create unique, personalized experiences for their customers, increasing customer loyalty and engagement.

-Sustainability:

Manufacturing 4.0 can help brands reduce their environmental impact by optimizing production processes and reducing waste. This can be achieved through the use of predictive maintenance, energy-efficient equipment, and sustainable materials.

In summary, Manufacturing 4.0 presents brands with an opportunity to improve their products, processes, and customer experiences. By leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven insights, brands can stay competitive and meet the evolving needs of their customers.

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Swedish design agency, Tomorrow Machine has developed a biodegradable bottle made from a potato starch-based material that can be peeled away like fruit skin and then eaten or dissolved in water.

The concept is being developed with global company Eckes Granini for its juice brand Brämhults.

Avant, a cell culture biotech start up company based in Hong Kong, has launched a multifunctional protein for the active beauty market made from cultivated fish cells. The company says the use of this ingredient will shape a new beauty segment in the anti-ageing and protective skin care category.

Avant’s Zellulin ingredient could be used in freeze dried powder or liquid form at various doses in topical skin formulations, beauty supplements and functional drinks.

The detergent brand Tide has embraced digital technology to offer a personalised clothes cleaning service in your area. Tide is asking consumers and business-owners to request new locations via a microsite. The locations will include drop-box lockers inside high-rise apartment buildings, offices and retail locations such as supermarkets, vans parked on student campuses and 24-hour stand-alone stores. Customers can pre-pay for laundry through an app, drop it off in the lockers and receive a notification when it is ready for pick-up.

As explored in our macrotrend Connected Living, Tide are embracing digital applications, e-commerce and geolocation to offer consumers ultra convenience.

Sony's latest research project was exhibited at Milan 2018. Sony suggests a move away from our current phone dependency to a more poetic interaction which engage our senses.

Smart sensors gathered information from visitors’ actions to deliver a variety of awe-inspiring surprises. These included a virtual butterfly flying away as a vase was moved across the table, and a wall projection of a flower opening upon a person’s approach. 

Moving lights, changing surfaces, colourful wall projections and haptic feedback provided a glimpse of future interiors in which humans and furniture seamlessly and intuitively interact.

Future personal care is an area that Schwarzkopf have been giving thought to with the launch of Professional's SalonLab showcased at CES 2018.

The SalonLab Customizer dynamically formulates and produces a customized hair care product for each client right in the salon based on the gathered data - at the simple touch of a button.

Recent graduate from the Royal College of Art Johanna Schmeer considers the future of food based on her knowledge of the possibilities afforded by nanotechnology. Creating a series of synthetic foods for a future whereby the worlds growing population needs to tap into new resources she conceives how products made from enzyme enhanced bio plastics would in theory harvest essential nutrients as alternatives to traditional food sources.

Built on fact, her project is based on a recent scientific breakthrough by scientist Russell Johnson, who has identified a way to synthesise functioning biological cells made from plastics.

Adding a smattering of fantasy based on this fact, Johanna has created 7 food products that fulfil the essential food groups. For instance they produce water, sugar, fat, minerals and proteins. These speculative objects secrete powders and liquids that could be ingested in our distant future.

http://vimeo.com/98281097

Envisioning a future whereby digital technology has superseded analogue cooking, Marjorie Artieres visualises the domestic kitchen in 2024 where 3D printers are commonplace. 3D printing food has provided perfect nutrition, no waste and issues surrounding food shortages, but with it has come uniformly shaped, processed & diagnostically perfect pods of food that has removed the pleasure and rituals of cooking.

Her Note by Note project offers a laboratory style tool kit for creating and recapturing the heritage of analogue cooking that has been lost with the rise of the digital kitchen.

Unlike cooking today, her future kitchen proposal has no recipes, instead Note by Note uses experimental and innovative cooking to create a new repertoire of flavours, textures and colours.

Artieres's project is as a provocation to technologists to re think the future of cooking with passion and taste rather than just necessity.

http://vimeo.com/98531837

Questioning whether cooking could be more about experimentation and less about tradition as well as the impact of the onset of the Internet of Everything - designers  Christian Isberg, Carl Berglöf and Lasse Korsgaard have devised a collaborative cooking machine that explores a new perspective on the future of cooking. A timber framework with a large cooking pot it has 35 food dispensers containing all the ingredients needed for an endless amount of dishes. Working remotely 5 anonymous chefs control the heat, timings and seasoning of the food via their smart phones.

The anonymity of the chefs also poses questions about the need for their physical presence and also redefines consumers relationship with food preparation and celebrity chef culture as well as our growing reliance on our technology as our digital guardians.

http://vimeo.com/96913610

Thanks to social media and smart phones we share our personal lives with complete strangers via curated feeds of Instagram and Facebook and the endless blogs citing what we have eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner - overloading the information about our lives and the lives of others, but in an attempt to create a more emphathetic approach to how others live their lives the new  20 Day Stranger app shares a persons live with a stranger for 20 days. Developed by Playful Systems, a research group at the MIT Media Lab and the Dalai Lama Centre for Ethics and Transformative Values, it is designed for the iPhone and reveals intimate, shared connections between two anonymous individuals offering up a mobile experience that exchanges one person's experience of the world with another's, while preserving anonymity on both sides.

Information is collected during the day using GPS and then images are collated from the internet to support what and where the user has been and these are then sent to the users app. Using Google Images and the likes of Foursquare, strangers will see the way you walked to work and your favourite cafe, but the actual locations and the identity of the user remains anonymous.

http://vimeo.com/92930928

The craft beer explosion looks like it is going to have to step aside for the DIY beer revolution. We have already seen the BrewBot that lets you brew your own beer at home and the DIY trend in the kitchen does not seem to be going anywhere which places the BrewNanny perfectly. The BrewNanny is a device that supervises your brewing so that nothing goes wrong, it will even alert you via Wifi if your beer is going bad.

Checking fermentation rate, temperature, light and CO2 the BrewNanny records the data of your beer batch which in turn can be shared with friends to share tips or to just celebrate the best local beer around.

This project is yet another example showing how consumers are taking control and utilising technology to make the experience even more seamless.

DNA testing and genetic modification are not new, but what is interesting is that a series of designers are looking to explore the ethics of this in a rash of projects coupled with advancements in DNA sequencing. Researchers have recently developed a technique that uses genetic analysis to create a computer composite of what the person looks like. In an article in the New Scientist,  the team captured images of 600 volunteers across ethnic backgrounds to build up a link between genes affects on facial structure based on sex and race. New Scientist had one of their writers volunteer their DNA with very accurate results. Commenting on issues surrounding privacy and ownership of DNA Artist Gabriel Barcia-Colombo has created a DNA vending machine that dispenses human genetic material. The DNA Vending Machine replaces snacks with samples of peoples genetic code which can then be bought.

http://vimeo.com/72085813#at=0

Also driven by a social comment on a patent granted in 2013 that would allow a gene perfecting system for future parents to control the characteristics of their children, Ben Landau showed his First Gift Blanket during Dutch Design week last year.

A modern take on the heirloom blanket to be passed from generation to generation the blanket has interwoven into it familial DNA sequencing putting into question the value of our personal data. Alongside the blanket he also asked visitors to donate their DNA for sequence testing.

Continuing the theme around future synthetic cosmetics and beauty care, Lucy Mcrae has released her latest film in collaboration with Nowness exploring her swallowable parfum concept. Similarly to Amy Congdon the relationship between synthetic biology and cosmetics is a growing area of exploration for designers and scientist. As Lucy describes in her accompanying interview , “We are living in an era of no rules; technology is corrupting nature’s ballot, forcing us to redefine our bodies’ limitations and boundaries,” Lucy believes that in the not too distant future we will be eating our cosmetics to enhance our skin luminosity, colour and scent.  

Speculative designer Amy Congdon considers a future where biotechnology will give designers a new set of materials and tools to work with. Believing that future materials will be grown from cells she suggests a range of jewellery that is grown from our bones, skin and cartilage. Envisioning a future 2082 her ‘Bio Nouveau’ collection replaces cosmetic surgery with tissue engineered disposable biological atelier pieces. In order to care for these semi living body adornments she has created a fictional range of body care products that include Graft Moisturiser & tone, SynSkin treatment and Graft Aftercare and Bioskin glue.

Known for changing the face of 3D printing when they unveiled their virtual potter/ 3D printed ceramic project at Milan Design week in 2010, Studio Unfold's latest project continues that journey with a series of 3D printed ceramic tools that dilute and diffuse perfume. Researching how ceramics both store and release perfume each 'tool' has been designed to explore the alchemy of scent and material as well as focusing on the importance of experiencing the delights of scent.

Designed in collaboration with Barnabé Fillion who is behind the perfume brand The Peddler their pipette, flask and funnel 'tools' offer new ways of experiencing scent.

Considering trends and shifts in our relationship with our health and wellbeing Nina van Bart's 'The Alchemist' short film cites the bathroom as a laboratory where one can take control over beauty and wellbeing. Mixing materials and chemicals, substances react to create new super sensory experiences. Playing with materials from growing crystals to drifting mist, van Bart's film suggests a future whereby we can mix our own personalised perfect elixir. http://vimeo.com/68999678

Lapka is a collection of smart sensors which plug into your iphone and give you a visual representation of your envrionment. Initially released during CES the consumer electronics show in las Vegas earlier this year, it is now being showcased with its delicious minimalist and emotive packaging that fits entirely with the wood detailing on the product itself.

Just opened in Paris is the Envie/Alive exhibition curated by Carole Collet which explores issues around synthetic biology. The exhibition begins with a statement  'A quiet revolution is happening. A new breed of designer has begun to reshape our world by re-orchestrating our relationship to nature'. Most of the work is not new, but it is for the first time that it is all under one roof.

Showing the likes of Emile de Vischer's pearling and Amy Congdon's biological atelier it also explores the work of architects and designers who are exploring the bio-engineered world.

Presenting a new design landscape with a glimpse to our synthetic future and a new ecological consideration the exhibition groups them under 5 headings

1/ The Plagiarists: (Nature as a model) those who look to nature to engineer man made and digital solutions.

2/ The New Artisans: (Nature as a co-worker) - those designers who are collaborating with nature to craft future consumer goods

3/ The Bio-Hackers: (Reprogrammed, ‘synthetic’ nature) designers working with synthetic biologists and who are engineering living organisms for a possible hybrid future

4/ The New Alchemists: (Hybridised nature) combining biological and chemical (non living) technology these designers merge robotics, chemistry and biology

5/ The Agents Provocateurs: (Conceptualised and imagined nature.) Pushing the boundaries to the extreme these designers explore the ethics around living technology as well as high-tech sustainability.

Alongside the exhibition ‘En Vie-Alive’ is hosting 4 designers and architects who are already working with synthetic biology or tissue engineering and has them set up in a lab style scenario showing the new tool kit for designers of the future - DNA and bacteria.

Exploring the possibilities of a material that sits somewhere between a liquid and a magnet, Studio Fraser Ross are pushing the boundaries of our perception of liquid and solid with their newly developed material. Beautiful in a mesmerising way the material can be manipulated by external forces such as gravity and air as demonstrated by their lovely video.  

http://vimeo.com/59835669#at=0