Four Generations. Four Industrial Revolutions.

I turned 42 this year. My grandfather Michael was 42 when he collapsed on the floor of the Dunlop tire factory in Cork in 1960. He died in hospital four days later. I never met him. But I have spent most of my life working in the same broad industrial world he was part of, and lately I have been thinking a lot about the generations that came before me and the ones that will come after.

I actually started writing this story in January 2024, when my wife and I were expecting our first child. I wrote something in a notebook that stuck with me: in 2050, my child would be 25 and I would be 65. He would be at the beginning of his career and I would be getting close to the end of mine. It was a simple thought, but it sent me down a rabbit hole. What kind of world would he inherit? What would work look like by then? How different would his working life be from mine? It also made me think more seriously about where my own family came from.

I was lucky enough to grow up around manufacturing technology. My dad, Sean, founded Seabrook in 1989, when I was five. He started the company because, in his words, he wanted to be “the one.” The one person who broke the cycle of poverty for his family. He was born in Cork in 1948, into an Ireland very different from the country we know today. Ireland had not experienced the same postwar economic boom as the United States and many other industrial economies. His parents, my grandparents Michael and Joan, were working people. They met while they were both working at the Dunlop tire factory in Cork.

In a lot of ways, theirs was the world of the Second Industrial Revolution: electrification, oil and gas, mechanization, mass production and the rise of the modern factory. I often think of Henry Ford's assembly line as one of the clearest examples of that era. It wasn't just a better way to build a car. It changed how labor was organized, how supply chains worked, how factories operated and, eventually, how society itself was structured around industrial production. The Dunlop factory where my grandparents worked sat beside Ford's plant in Cork, which had opened in 1917. By the postwar years, Ford was building passenger and commercial vehicles while Dunlop supplied the tires. Together with the industries that grew up around them, they made automotive manufacturing one of Cork's major employers.

My grandfather eventually became a line supervisor at Dunlop. The things he was responsible for would sound familiar to any manufacturing leader today: production, quality, throughput, people and process performance. Then, in 1960, he collapsed on the factory floor. He died four days later in hospital, reportedly from an aneurysm. He was 42. My father was still a child.

I never knew my grandfather, and now I find myself thinking about another generation that may miss out on that relationship. My father was diagnosed with dementia in 2022 after suffering a stroke. He now lives in a memory care home in Cork. A few weeks ago, he had another mini-stroke. Physically, he recovered again, but his memory is gradually fading. He still remembers his family. I don't know how long that will remain true. My son is two now, and my daughter is due around Thanksgiving. I hope my father gets to meet her. I also know my children probably won't know their grandfather in the way I wish they could, just as I never knew mine.

There is something both sad and strangely meaningful about that continuity. My grandfather worked in the industrial world of mass production. My father came of age as manufacturing moved into the Third Industrial Revolution, when electronics, PLCs, computers, software and automation started transforming the factory. Then, in 1989, he started Seabrook. That was the industrial world I grew up in. I watched manufacturing move from largely manual processes toward digital control, automation, MES, enterprise integration and eventually cloud computing.

When I took over the business in 2019, another transition was already well underway. Industry 4.0 brought connected systems, cloud platforms, IIoT, industrial data and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. I rebranded the business to Connected Manufacturing. The questions started to change. It was no longer just: How do we automate the machine? It became: How do we connect the factory? How do we understand the data? How do we give systems context? And, increasingly, how much decision-making are we willing to hand over to machines?

That is the industrial transition my generation is living through, and it won't be the last. My children may grow up in what is increasingly described as Industry 5.0. Unlike earlier industrial revolutions, Industry 5.0 is not really defined by a single machine, technology or source of power. The idea is more about human-centered technology, resilience, sustainability and the relationship between people and increasingly intelligent systems. To me, that makes the next transition less about what technology can do and more about what we decide people should continue to own.

My grandfather's generation worked alongside machines that amplified physical labor. My father's generation helped automate those machines. My generation is connecting them, giving them context and introducing AI into decision-making. My children may inherit machines capable of doing all three. So when I think about 2050 now, I spend less time wondering what technology will be capable of. It will almost certainly be capable of more than we can imagine today. The harder question is what we will still ask people to be responsible for: judgment, leadership, creativity, accountability, empathy, purpose and the parts of work that are fundamentally human.

Every industrial revolution has changed labor. Jobs disappeared. New ones emerged. Skills changed. Power shifted. Productivity increased. And society had to renegotiate the relationship between people and machines. That process is happening again. The difference this time is that machines are no longer just becoming stronger or faster. They are becoming capable of reasoning, recommending and increasingly acting.

That is what makes this Labor Day feel different to me. I am 42, the same age my grandfather was when his life ended on the floor of a tire factory. My father is still here, but parts of his memory are disappearing. My son is two. My daughter is on the way. Four generations connected by manufacturing, each living through a different stage of industrial change.

And the question I keep coming back to is not what machines will be able to do by the time my children enter the workforce. It is what work we will decide should still belong to humans?

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Industrial AI Review is an independent publication covering industrial AI, manufacturing technology, automation, and industrial software.

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