Is Brazil committed to the 4th Industrial Revolution?

By Werter Padilha *

The 4th Industrial Revolution is underway in the world. And I believe that for Brazilian companies in the sector there is no option: it is essential to invest in the modernization of management, production processes, logistics, supply chain, human resources and, if necessary, add more efficiency even in the procedure of serving the coffee .

For more than 10 years, countries like Germany, the United States and China have invested in technologies for advances in the industrial sector. Meanwhile, in Brazil, we received the news that the Brazilian industry may leave the ranking of the ten largest in the world due to the economic crisis, shrinking markets in Latin America and structural problems of competitiveness, productivity and innovation - we still have a park productive system, with manufacturing lines and patterns that characterize the outdated 2nd Industrial Revolution, as we can analyze based on the data published on this website by Brazilian Industrial Development Agency (ABDI). The participation of the industrial transformation sector in GDP was already 21.6%, in the mid-80s, and currently revolves around 11%. Brazil has also registered a drop in the productivity of the industry in the last 10 years.

The main question then is: how to overcome the limits imposed by financial and tax issues, as well as by the low rates of industrial growth in recent years and the lack of confidence of the entrepreneur, to promote the reversal of this scenario marked by deindustrialization?

The National IoT Plan (IoT.br), which has Industry as one of the priority verticals, came to leverage innovation in the direction of Industry 4.0, benefiting small, medium and large companies, and to answer the question above. Also keeping an eye on this need to prioritize the sector, the Chamber of Industry 4.0 was the first multisectoral chamber created in function of IoT.br, coordinated by the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communications (MCTIC) and with participation companies, academia and entities, such as ABES (Brazilian Association of Software Companies).

Since it was instituted in May of this year, its members have been working intensively and this House released, in September, the first proposal for an Action Plan to be implemented between 2019 and 2022, which “aims to be an instrument to induce the use of concepts and practices related to Industry 4.0, aiming at increasing the competitiveness and productivity of Brazilian companies, contributing to the insertion of Brazil in the global value chains and, consequently, improving its position in global competitiveness indexes ”.

Another point to be highlighted in this regard is the progress of the bill that exempts IoT devices from various taxes (Fistel, CFRP and Condecine) in the National Congress, relieving the final price of equipment and contributing to the democratization of access to new technologies, since IoT is one of the technologies that induce innovation and productivity, together with Additive Manufacturing (3D), Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, among others.

In my day-to-day life, I have endeavored to talk about the instruments made available by the agencies that promote innovation, which benefit the industry, such as FINEP, BNDES, Sebrae, EMBRAPII, SENAI and CNPq, among others. These are lines of financing offered to entrepreneurs interested in inserting their companies in the disruptive environment of advanced manufacturing, with more attractive conditions than in commercial banks and even with non-reimbursable funds, depending on the design of the project.

The most recent of these is FINEP INOVACRED 4.0, which has measures to streamline the release of funds and which will make available R$ 200 million in the credit modality, aiming to support the formulation and implementation of strategic digital transformation plans that cover the use, in production, technology deployment services, such as IoT, big data, cloud computing, digital security, advanced robotics, digital and additive manufacturing, artificial intelligence and digitization.

Even a modern industrial sector, such as the Automotive Industry, for which I have been providing services for many years and where I had the satisfaction of conducting, recently, a pioneering IoT project in inventory management, it has a long way to go in the digital transformation. In this sense, Brazil has a Federal Government program, Route 2030 - Mobility and LogisticsThe, whose main objective is to expand the global insertion of the Brazilian automotive industry through the export of vehicles and auto parts, which also has specific lines of financing for innovation, such as those of Finep and Embrapii, which includes the specific line EMPRAPII Route 2030.

A few weeks ago I was on an Amcham mission in Israel and it caught my attention the ability that Israelis have to make it happen, without fear of failures and possible failures. I believe that this culture can also be established in Brazil to accelerate our transition to Industry 4.0, as the overall scenario is quite challenging.

For the actions in favor of Industry 4.0 in the Brazilian market that I have listed here (I could mention many others), I believe that Brazil is committed to the completion of the 4th Industrial Revolution, in order to resume the sector's representativeness in relation to GDP, to sustain the position of the Country in the international scenario, increase productivity and increase the generation of qualified jobs. I recently heard a statement that I endorse here: investment in Industry 4.0 is neither expensive nor cheap. This investment is necessary and urgent. 

* Werter Padilha is coordinator of the IoT Committee of ABES (Brazilian Association of Software Companies)