Preparing engineers for Industry 4.0

My old engineering days take me back to the late nights during my IIT days, soldering circuits and sketching out block diagrams on scraps of paper.

- PRAVESH DUDANI

We were obsessed with making things work — a working power amplifier, a functioning code that finally compiled. It was a simpler time. The world moved more slowly.

Today, the world engineers graduate into, feels like it runs on fast-forward. Industry 4.0 is here — not as a buzzword, but as areality. Robots talk to each other on factory floors, and machines flag faults before they happen. Data, not just steel or oil, has become the raw material of progress. A recent World Economic Forum study warns that nearly half of today’s skills will need to be refreshed or replaced by 2027.

That figure does not scare me ~ it excites me. Because it means engineering is nolonger just about ‘knowing, It’s about staying curious, staying uncomfortable, and staying relevant in the age of industry 4.0 and 5.0.

Industry 4.0: A new engineering paradigm

Industry 4.0, in terms of automation, cyber-physical systems, AL, and IoT, reorganises allthe engineering disciplines. Mechanical engineers integrate robotics and digital twins into production lines today, civil engineers integrate IoT sensors into smart infrastructure, and chemical engineers apply advanced simulations to optimise processes.

Engineers must be more than experts in a discipline: they must be adaptable problem solvers who can bring machines, information, and human needs together into sustainable, ethical solutions.

Lifelong learning and curriculum reform