The 4th Industrial Revolution, as has been known the Digital Transformation of conventional industrial and manufacturing processes, due to incorporation of new technologies such as IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Communications, is changing the landscape of Industrial Employment.
In the new connected shop floor, the labour market dynamics and needs will necessarily be different since technology is easing all the paperwork, data collection/analysis, amongst other tasks.

A McKinsey research on Technology, Jobs and the Future of Work published in 2017, states thart “About half the activities people are paid to do globally could theoretically be automated using currently demonstrated technologies”. This estimates that between 400 and 800 million current occupations can be displaced by 2030. McKinsey points out jobs involving physical labor or data collection/processing as two of the most vulnerable jobs asDigital Transformation occurs.

This will open up space for new jobs and occupations, which will grow with Industry 4.0.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has published a report on the “Future of Jobs” which can give us some hope: Despite the predictable depletion in some current manufacturing professions, it’s not expected that the future will bring a huge increase in the unemployment rate. It’s like the good old Artificial Intelligence and Robots discussion : They won’t be taking our jobs, they will just be doing some repetitive or tougher tasks, leaving us time and energy to focus on highly valuable and important roles. Check the Graphic about “Technologies by proportion of companies likely to adopt them by 2022: Robots are not even in the Top 10 of new Technologies!

In this report, WEF predicts a strong employment growth in sectors like AI, robotics, customer services and skills development.

To match this change in the employment landscape, it is important that every employee can be trained and gain experience in areas that will arise and gain relevance, such as Systems analysis or Technology designing and programming. This table shows exactly which skills are considered the most valuable today, which will be trending in 2022 and which will be declining.

Although this is just a prediction, can be used as a frame for employers to decide on which soft skills and training program to invest, in order to prepare for the future!

As of this week, we will talking about some of the new job roles brought by Industry 4.0. and how each of them can count on a Manufacturing Software to better perform their tasks