Skills for Industrie 4.0
At a glance
- Industrie 4.0 is bringing lasting changes in the workplace. Technologies that connect things, data, and processes are placing new demands on employees and management, especially in industry.
- Workplace training for Industrie 4.0 is thus the key to the success of industrial enterprises. The implementation of the digital transformation possesses particular challenges for SMEs.
- At the same time, however, Industrie 4.0 is making new, digital continuing professional development formats available that allow training content to be precisely tailored to the knowledge and needs of staff and management.
- The constantly changing list of skills required for Industrie 4.0 must be regularly updated so that the relevant adjustments in the education system can be made. In the future, the focus will be on interdisciplinary thinking and acting, cross-functional process know-how, and IT skills involving both specialised and more general application knowledge.
- The goal should be to prevent a twofold digital divide between large and small industrial enterprises and between high-skilled and low-skilled workers. SMEs should receive special support to help them develop the skills needed for Industrie 4.0.
acatech Industrie 4.0 Skills Development Study
The acatech POSITION PAPER is based on an empirical survey of companies’ views on skills development for Industrie 4.0 that was carried out in September/October 2015 and December 2015/January 2016. The survey investigated the statusquo with regard to the implementation of Industrie 4.0 among German businesses, as well as the associated skills requirements.
Its focus was on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). During the course of the study, 345 companies were asked to complete an online survey and interviews were conducted with 38 experts from academia and business. In addition, a second empirical survey was conducted on behalf of acatech in May/June 2016 by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW). This survey was incorporated as an additional training and professional development module into an IAB/ZEW workplace 4.0 survey of German businesses. This representative survey asked 2,032 companies about the implementation of Industrie 4.0 and how their employees’ work and the demands on them are changing as a result of the fourth industrial revolution. The findings of these surveys formed the basis for the formulation of recommendations for policymakers, businesses, associations and education institutions, as well as for the development of the demonstration solution.