The Future Of Work Input – Henrik Von Sheel’s Industry 4.0

At present, the impact of the media on daily life has been of great interest, especially if we reflect on its objective as part of education.

From an objective point of view, teaching individuals the necessary set of talents and skills is something that should be taken into account for the engineers, who are increasingly facing a future full of uncertainties. Not a single person could have an idea with certainty about what life will be like in several years. Now add the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution to this.

The arrival of Industry 4.0’s has completely transformed business practices today, and one can certainly credit the attribution and contribution of Henrik Von Scheel in it. Henrik is from Denmark and is profoundly known as a Business Thinker, Consultant, Speaker, and Author. He has played a crucial role in the incorporation of industry 4.0 in the world, as he was appointed in Germany as the Advisory Group Member for the Federal Ministry of Research & Education.

During industry 4.0 and digital transformation, all young people had to develop their talent, to promote a broad development of skills, attitudes, and experiences in digital innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity, which prepares them for their career competence and favor their employability.

Certainly, over time, more jobs are being generated that focus on technology and robotics, something that nobody imagined only a few decades ago. It is still developing, and we have no idea what turns it will take in the years to come. It is something that we do not have an accurate idea of how it will be in the future.

One should opt for degrees with the implementation of teamwork, as this allows young people to share their ideas, strengthens their interpersonal skills, and their learning processes.

A lot of times, we have wondered how digitalization relates to the learning of fresh graduates, and it may seem that it has had a positive impact. However, the development of technology has had an impact on everyone’s behavior, because we have landed in an era where fresh graduates prefer to search for all kinds of information online, and conventional book are becoming more of decor on a bookshelf than a source of knowledge, information, or leisure.

Many times, the information that is uploaded to the cloud can be malicious, and whoever accesses that information is not able to discern between a reliable and a corrupt source.

All these technologies and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Google, and Apple, etc. have been a significant contribution to our lives today. Some experts even believe that humankind is becoming submissive of these social platforms. It is as if our mind were a fertile field and when we get all the information of these means, we automatically plant it in our brain believing that what is shown to us is true and that is the way it should be.

Technology is evolving at an accelerated pace, and companies must adapt to changes as soon as possible to generate a source of competitive advantage. For the digitalization of the industry is a revolution that will change the paradigm of industrial manufacturing, work environments, and how to relate to both suppliers and customers.

In this way, those companies that achieve the wave of industry 4.0 will achieve success in their respective sectors. Those that do not will undoubtedly be in serious trouble in the future. Engineers will now have to challenge this new era using their skills to achieve more effective management of resources, improve all production processes, and increase profitability.

They will have to rely on a great variety of technologies that are proliferating because their incorporation will facilitate the flow of information from the physical world to business decisions in real time.

Some challenges that an engineer will have to face include the cons of digital culture as mentioned before, the resistance to change, the lack of a clear vision of digital operations, a confused knowledge of the economic benefits of investing in digital technologies, insufficient talent, and mainly, the reliability of digital security.

The Future of Work

As technology develops at an accelerated pace, cognitive abilities and tasks that were once thought to be reserved for humans are increasingly being carried out by machines, causing growing concern about the impact on jobs and the subsequent risks for government, business and people. In addition, globalization, demographics, climate change, and geopolitical transformations are already making a significant impact on the work landscape.

There is a window of opportunity now for individuals, business and government to understand and proactively manage the transition to a new future.

One of the most immediate and impactful outcomes of technological evolution is the vast advancement in automation. Every day, more manual processes become automated, and as technology continues to

As a result, the world of work and labor market demand are rapidly changing. According to McKinsey, up to 375 million workers may need to change their occupational category by 2030, and digital work could contribute $2.7 trillion to global GDP by 2025. Faced with the scale of the unstoppable shifts in workforce demands, we must address the challenges associated with workforce transformation, starting by taking an in-depth look at its impact on the world of work. Four key impact areas should be considered:

1. Technological: For most global industries (e.g., logistics, financial, manufacturing, aerospace, etc.), advancements in AI, robotics, 3D printing and the internet of things will put a great deal of pressure on companies to automate in order to remain competitive in a global landscape. This will require companies to have a solid understanding of the way these technologies impact their industries and how they can ensure organizational agility to adapt to these changes. Increased global competitiveness will accelerate cost pressure, which will lead to substantial downsizing or reassignment of a large contingent of workers. McKinsey estimates that up to 800 million individuals may be displaced by automation by 2030.

2. Economic: There are four factors of production that fuel economic growth: land, labor, capital, and enterprise. Today, the world is attaining only 52% of its entrepreneurial capacity, and this number is declining year over year. Large, established enterprises have a significant advantage in the future of work than smaller companies due to their ability to adapt to technological changes. However, this is not a recipe for long-term, sustainable economic success. The world must focus on supporting independent entrepreneurs, as small and midsize businesses are the fuel of most economies of the world today.

3. Social: Technology will continue to change societal values. Today, more than 36% of the U.S. Workforce are freelancers for reasons including autonomy, flexibility and extra income. Co-working spaces are exploding in popularity and are often fully subscribed before opening their doors. Technology has enabled people to work anytime, anywhere. By 2027, more than half of American workers will be freelancing.

4. Education and training: Part-and-parcel with economic development is one’s ability to access training for employment. Naturally, tectonic shifts are happening in the education space. Students are less interested in stale curriculums and keener to take shorter, skills-based training that is more relevant to today’s workplace. Employers are focusing on the skills required to achieve their business objectives and remain competitive and agile, which requires them to ensure their employees the necessary training to fill these skills gaps. Workers, naturally, need to acquire skills “on-demand” to adapt to their changing roles and responsibilities.

What foreseeable impact will the Industry 4.0 technologies have on employment?

We are in a global market, where skills, price, and competition rule. 35% of the skills demanded jobs across industries will change by 2020. And at least one in four workers in OECD countries is already reporting a skills mismatch with regards to the skills demanded actually by their current jobs.

The question is: what will be in high demand in two to five years? We are moving into an era where mindset is more important than skills. This is not to say that skills are not important anymore. But the mindset will be our ability to adapt, collaborate, and bridge cross-competencies in specialized areas like Quantum Science, Artificial Intelligence, and Pharmaceutical.

The changes we are immersed in have a scale and complexity unlike anything humankind has experienced before: