The Fourth Industrial Revolution Jobs: Pros and Cons Essay

Executive summary

We live in a fast-paced world where things change drastically, and one of them is technology. More so, many jobs were replaced by machines that are more efficient and require less effort from humankind, and this has benefited companies a lot because they decreased employment and increased the number of machines and which will give them little to no errors in manufacturing products in the future and pay fewer employees. There are advantages and disadvantages to using machines because using machines will increase efficiency, but it cannot think for themselves as humans do, they can only do specific tasks that are repetitive, but if something happens out of the machine’s programmed script, it would not know what to do in that case like human’s problem-solving skills. And the question is if industry 4.0 prevails, what the next generation will do for a living from a management perspective?

Introduction

Focus

The digital revolution profoundly influences people’s lives and is becoming more prominent in numerous areas of the economy and society. The advent of current digital technologies that result in drastic changes is referred to as digitalization as a trend. According to Dexeus (2018), the digital revolution, or digitalization, comprises unique and modern technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud service, robots, virtual and augmented realities, and nano-materials. The digital era is defined by new norms where the world is formed of bits rather than atoms, and information is referred to as raw material. As stated by Dexeus (2018), society has excellent technical capability and flexibility to impact industrial, cultural, financial, and educational industries in the digital era. Furthermore, Internet development and adoption are rapidly expanding and significantly impact the broader economy. Essentially, Industry 4.0 is known as a Smart Factory since it enables continuous process adjustment, learning, and optimization (Lavopa & Delera, 2021). Hence, as technology advances, machines begin to communicate with one another via the Internet of Things, advanced algorithms embolden numerous workflows in various industries and sectors, and bidirectional interfaces enable real-time interactions between users and devices.

Objective

The digital revolution that is currently transforming society is referred to as Industry 4.0. The growth and rise of several revolutionary technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Drones, and 3D printing are part of Industry 4.0. The emerging technologies incorporated within Industry 4.0 alter established practices and create new opportunities. As a result, Industry 4.0 unites humans, automated machinery, robots, and digital technology. The objective is to discuss Industry 4.0, including statistics, definition, challenges, advantages, disadvantages, possibilities in the future, and success factors from a management perspective.

Googling

The development of occupations and skills required for the effective implementation of Industry 4.0 is of current interest and relevance to both scholars, policymakers, and practical managers. The use of cutting-edge automation and digital technologies in manufacturing, such as Cyber-Physical Systems, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and Big Data, is expected to have a substantial impact on work processes and the work environment. Employee roles are projected to alter in terms of substance, and new job kinds will be developed. As a result, new skill needs are expected. Despite the growing interest in the subject, research on the changes in employment and skills required by Industry 4.0 is still in its early stages. So far, a study has been primarily theoretical, providing a broad perspective of the industry 4.0-related capabilities without defining them according to the specificities of the many organizational sectors where technologies are being implemented.

Areas where the Industry 4.0 concept would affect the number of employees.

Definition of industry 4.0 jobs

Industry 4.0 refers to the digital transformation of traditional industrial and manufacturing processes through the integration of technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), big data, augmented reality (AR) and virtualization, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital communications infrastructure. Industry 4.0 is expected to produce a paradigm shift in industrial production and fundamental changes in labor market dynamics. Benefits include decentralized decision-making in real-time by robots operating industrial facilities and re-shoring manufacturing units to advanced economies. And that includes jobs in the future.

Some issues with industry 4.0 jobs

When it comes to industry 4.0 jobs, we’re confronted with a few issues that could arise over time.

• Staple wage: Lots of people mightn’t view this as an issue but it is an issue for people who are devoted to their jobs and work hard. In the future jobs, people who work hard will have the same wage as people who doesn’t and that’s a huge issue.
• Automation: Automation is a big threat in the jobs field in the future because most jobs are being replaced by automation and technology and it’s expected this to rise more in the future.
• Unstable labor markets: People look for traditional jobs because they know more about them and their routine, so it makes a safe work environment for them. During the development, however, there will be a huge transformation of new jobs that people aren’t used to, which will cause a lot of people to be intimidated.
• Capitalism: Capitalism is one of the issues in our time, but it will increase in the future, and with it will come inequality and unfairness, which are its selves a problem we face nowadays.
• Continuous development: Development is definitely a good thing, but it might be an issue in the workforce because it takes a huge place in it and if the jobs are continuously developing, there wouldn’t be time to adapt to the job, we will just be developing it which will show discomfort in the long term.

Challenges of industry 4.0 jobs

The industry 4.0 jobs field poses a variety of challenges, which are divided into the following categories: economic, technical, social, technological, and humanitarian.

• Changing job functions: Those who spend more time at home and no longer commute to physical offices may demand more diverse activities within walking distance.
• Offices of the future: It is possible that physical office spaces will be designed to accommodate collaborative activities rather than isolated work.
• Retail experience: It is expected that physical stores will focus more on experiences than traditional purchasing, such as the convergence of entertainment, shopping, dining, and working.
• Building footprints: Commercial and office space that is unused may be renovated into apartments. It will require zoning changes and significant investments from building owners.

Advantages of industry 4.0 jobs

With the creation of new jobs today and the advancement of technology intervention, there are many advantages that come along with it that make industry 4.0 jobs the best of all time.

• Increase in accuracy: As industry 4.0 advances, the possibility of future jobs being accurate will also increase because computers are better at storing, analyzing, interpreting and drawing meaningful conclusions from big data than humans are.
• Improve in production rate: In the Industrial Revolution, technological advances and productivity improvements are not the only factors that change production processes and how they relate to one another, but they are the most important.
• Better quality: Since advanced technology will be involved in labor, it will create much better quality since they will be programmed to achieve the work in the most perfect way which will have the best quality.
• Improved services: Services will improve much more since computers will get the work done in handling big data, and computers have a one-of-a-kind advantage over humans.
• Low expenses: Since we will depend on machines, we will decrease human labor and replace it with machines which will count as an investment and decrease expenses at the long term.

Disadvantages of industry 4.0 jobs

As well as the advantages of industry 4.0 jobs, there are disadvantages as well:

• Limited job opportunities: While machines occupy future jobs there be fewer and limited job opportunities for humans which count as a disadvantage of industry 4.0 jobs.
• Less income: The few jobs that will remain in the industry 4.0 jobs will have less income due to the expenses of technology at that time.
• More repair cost: Machines cost lots of money but also repairing them costs more expenses and energy, which’s a big problem in the industry 4.0 because there is a huge dependence on machines and technology.
• Increase in unemployment: Technology and machines will take a huge place in the future jobs field, which will result from increasing in the unemployment rate.
• More poverty:As we mentioned earlier, future jobs will be limited, the income will be less and there will be an increase in unemployment which will all lead to a poverty rate increase and that’s one of the disadvantages of industry 4.0 jobs.

What next?

Detailed disadvantages

AI and automation will affect one-fifth of the worldwide workforce, with the greatest influence in industrialized countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States. By 2022, half of the employers expect automation to reduce their full-time workforce, and by 2030, robots will have replaced 800 million humans around the world.

While these figures may appear disheartening, they could just reflect a shift in the workforce, and displaced workers with the correct skills could take on more lucrative employment. According to the World Economic Forum, 38% of organizations believe AI and automation technology would enable employees to do new productivity-enhancing occupations, while over 25% believe automation will lead to the introduction of new roles.

Detailed advantages

In addition to new roles and duties, the 4th Industrial Revolution may lead to an increase in the use of professional contractors or remote workers by businesses. Employers may become more supportive of existing employees who desire to work remotely or with greater flexibility as a result of new technologies and shifting needs.

Giving future and current employees more flexibility in terms of how, when, and where they work may be extremely helpful to businesses. It may enable them to hire a global workforce, boost employee loyalty and commitment, scale more quickly, and achieve new levels of efficiency. Employees gain as well, because not having to commute means more free time, a better work-life balance, and more flexibility, all of which contribute to total employee happiness and dedication.

The most jobs to be Impacted

Nearly every industry will be impacted by the 4th Industrial Revolution, with 50% of jobs at risk of being automated. However, because robots, like human employees, have a specialized skill set, some industries are more likely to be mechanized than others.

We should expect a drop in the number of full-time employees in manufacturing and agricultural occupations in the near future, as many of these jobs are already being phased out due to increased automation. Robots can also execute jobs in industrial plants more effectively and safely, and their application in production dates back to the 1970s.

The OECD published a list of professions that are likely to become obsolete or automated in specific industries. Food preparation, construction, cleaning, driving, and agricultural vocations are at the top of the list.

Detailed challenges

• A Technical Skills Gap. The workforce’s needs are always changing. Is it possible for your employees to keep up? When looking for candidates to fill unfilled roles, seek for people who have “digital dexterity,” or the ability to grasp both industrial processes and the digital tools that support them. Business models will only be able to successfully deploy new technology and manage operations if they have suitable employees.
• Data Sensitivity. As technology advances, worries about data and IP privacy, ownership, and management have grown. Is there a common example? Data is required to train and test an AI algorithm before it can be properly implemented. The data must be provided in order for this to happen. Many businesses, on the other hand, are hesitant to share their data with third-party solution developers. Furthermore, our present data governance regulations for internal use within enterprises are insufficient to facilitate data exchange across organizations.
• Interoperability. The lack of separation between protocols, components, products, and systems is another key concern. Interoperability, unfortunately, limits firms’ ability to innovate. Interoperability also limits possibilities for upgrading system components because they cannot easily “swap out” one vendor for another or one aspect of the system for another.
• Security. Threats to the factory’s present and emerging vulnerabilities are other major worries. Real-time interoperability is possible because of the physical and digital components that make up smart factories, but it comes with the risk of a larger attack surface. When various machines and gadgets are connected to single or multiple networks in a smart factory, flaws in any one of them could make the entire system vulnerable to attack. Companies must anticipate both enterprise system vulnerabilities and machine-level operational weaknesses to assist in tackling this issue. Many businesses rely on their technology and solution providers to identify vulnerabilities, therefore, they aren’t completely equipped to deal with these security concerns.
• Handling Data Growth. As more businesses rely on AI, they will be confronted with more data that is generated at a quicker rate and provided in a variety of formats. AI systems must be easy to understand in order to sift through these massive volumes of data. Furthermore, these algorithms must be able to mix data of various sorts and timeframes.

List of important success factors

Some success factors that involve the usage of industry 4.0 and advanced human skills includes top management commitment and support, aligning the initiatives of logistic 4.0 with organizational strategy, technological infrastructure, willingness to invest in logistics 4.0, training and education, and research environment.

• Top management commitment and support: Organizations need to be supportive and committed to providing the technological aspect financially to adopt industry 4.0 effectively.
• Aligning the initiative of logistic 4.0 with organizational strategy: to develop and manage the strategies and planning in benefit of adopting 4.0 logistics such as big data analytics, CPS, IoT, and traceability.
• Technological infrastructure: having a strong technological infrastructure that has the essential smart technology such as real-time condition monitoring and high-speed data sharing technologies is a success factor since it influences other factors like smart work culture and analytical capabilities.
• Willingness to invest in logistic 4.0: in order to achieve desirable results, investment is a key factor that stakeholders should pay attention to, since logistic 4.0 requires more advanced technologies and the latest inventions that results in high investment cost that will eventually have a greater in the return value.
• Training and education: since logistic 4.0 is an evolving concept that requires new skills and responsibilities, training and educating candidates is an important factor to succeed in the such matter for humans to maintain jobs that will pay higher salaries for the advanced skills it requires, and to evolve the working place to make a new room for new ideas and innovations.
• Research environment: creating an environment that develops the processes and technologies to support the adoption of 4.0 logistics is also an important success factor that involves top management, knowledge transfer using a good technology infrastructure, smart working place, and analytical capabilities development.

Discussion

The effect of industry 4.0 on jobs have been addressed in this essay, and we have seen the advantages and disadvantages of this new era of innovative technologies. More so, if we evaluated both sides of the argument, we can say that the advantages overpower the disadvantages considering that we are living in a fast paced world where we strive to do repetitive tasks faster and more efficient using machines with less error, yes it could lead to less employment in the production sector, but it provides a bigger room to evolve and to learn new skills that will help us grow as a community to innovate new technologies that will help make our daily life less of a hassle. Consequently, industry 4.0 will not only eliminate jobs but rather create new jobs to satisfy the new era of the automated world that we live in, not only that but to keep up with the competitors of the working sector worldwide.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have talked about the effect of industry 4.0 on jobs in the future, where we saw that there are some issues with industry 4.0 being a threat to people’s jobs and career paths since automated machines will replace most traditional jobs, but the advantage of replacing these traditional jobs is that the manufacturing efficiency will increase, and the work environment will be safer. Adding to that, we have talked about the challenges that industry 4.0 poses to the economy, technology, and other categories. Consequently, we have talked about the advantages and disadvantages, where we have found that industry 4.0 could increase accuracy, improve production, better the quality and services of jobs, but if we are going to replace human jobs with machines, there will be more repair costs for those machines, it will limit job opportunities, decrease traditional jobs income which will cause an increase in the unemployment rate and poverty of unskilled candidates. In addition, we found some success factors that will help people to accommodate the changes and that is by training and educating people to be able to fill in the jobs that require a new set of skills. Also, management organizes the aspects of adopting industry 4.0 efficiently, creating plans and strategies using big data analytics, CPS, and IoT, and that is by having a strong technological infrastructure. As we discussed, industry 4.0 will eliminate some jobs that are no longer needed to be done by humans because machines are able to replace them effectively, but that does not mean that there will be fewer jobs; since we are evolving, new jobs will be created and demanded in the future, requiring new skills that will benefit the work market at the economy.

References

The impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution on jobs and… (n.d.).

PricewaterhouseCoopers. (n.d.). Workforce of the future – the competing forces shaping 2030. PwC.

Loon, R. van. (2021). The Future of Work: Confronting one of the biggest challenges of the next decade. LinkedIn.

FIRICAN, G. (2020). The pros and cons of the 4th industrial revolution.

Hinton, S. (2018). How The Fourth Industrial Revolution Is Impacting The Future of Work.

STEFANINI. (2021). The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Industry 4.0 Challenges and Opportunities for Your Business.

Smit, J., Kreutzer, S., Moeller, C., Carlberg, M.: Industry 4.0 (2016).

Chryssolouris, G., Dimitris, M., Dimitris, M.: Manufacturing systems: skills and competencies for the future. Procedia CIRP 7, 17–24 (2013).

The Boston Consulting Group: Man and Machine in Industry 4.0 (2015).

Khan, Shahbaz, Rubee Singh, Abid Haleem, Jacinta Dsilva, and Sadia S. Ali. 2022. “Exploration of Critical Success Factors of Logistics 4.0: A DEMATEL Approach”Logistics 6, no. 1: 13.

Lavopa, A. and Delera, M. (2021). What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution? Industrial Analytics Platform.

Dexeus, C. R. (2018). The deepening effects of the digital revolution. In the Future of Tourism (pp. 43-69).