# Revolution 4.0: Industry vs. Agriculture in a Future Development for SMEs
## 2 Industrial Revolution  
Digital technology offers innovative benefits for the economic business [19]. In industry, the first revolution began around 1780 with the introduction of mechanical production plants powered by liquid water or steam (Figure 1). The second industrial revolution was born 30 years later when the first mechanical assembly line powered by electricity was built: the era of mass production had begun. The third industrial revolution began in the late 1960s when the first programmable logic controller (PLC) was built. From that moment on, it was possible to automate production using electronics and information technology (IT) [28].  
The fourth industrial revolution began in 2011 in Germany with a German government project to promote deep computerization and conceptual innovation of production [29]. In these few years, German firms (and not only) have transformed the theory (born during the Second World War) into successful applications [30]. The fourth industrial revolution is today's and makes use of cybernetics [31; 32; 33; 34]. The elimination of the separation among the physical and the virtual world is an essential pattern of the Industry 4.0 [19]. The concept Industry 4.0 is a \"collective\" term that brings together technologies and typical concepts of the \"value chain\" [35]. Industry 4.0 connects machines, work, and systems in general through intelligent networks (as the Internet of things) [36; 37], created along the entire value chain, which can control themselves autonomously and each other [38; 39].  
Based on these premises, the virtual object structure is linked to the Internet of Things (IoT) concept. In industry, as also in agriculture, the IoT combines the concepts of \"Internet\" and \"thing\", which can be explained through some key features of the IoT, that are: interconnectivity, object-related services, heterogeneity (due to varied devices in the IoT), dynamic changes (since device status can change with dynamism), and high scalability (Table 1).  
The IoT can therefore be semantically defined as a worldwide network (World Wide Network) of uniquely addressable objects interconnected through standard communication protocols (Figure 2). Consequently, the Internet serves as a storage and communication infrastructure that contains a virtual representation of things that connect relevant information with physical objects. Virtual objects act as central object information hubs, combining and continuously updating data from a wide range of sources. Virtual objects can be used to coordinate and control business processes remotely via Internet.  
Figure 1: From Industry 1.0 to 4.0. Source: own elaboration.  
Cyber-security, cloud computing, big data, open source technology, and digital twins are some of the most current concepts that were introduced by 4.0 revolution [2; 31; 35; 40; 41]. Highlighting the application of the Industry 4.0, several governments proposed some advanced initiatives around the world, e.g., the Nouvelle France Industrielle in France [42], the Made in China 2025 initiative [43], and the Smart Manufacturing Leadership Coalition in USA [44; 45].