Skilled Workers: Are They the Losers of “Industry 4.0”?

Abstract

We are currently experiencing a re-orientation towards industrial work under the keyword “Industry 4.0”. The structural change towards a service economy, proclaimed in the twentieth century, has been caught up by the industry. The share of the industry in terms of gross value added has been comparatively stable in Germany since the 1990s and today amounts to around 25 % (cf. Ahrens and Spöttl, Digitalisierung industrieller Arbeit, Edition Sigma, Baden-Baden, 2015; Bauernhansl, Industrie 4.0 in Produktion, Automatisierung und Logistik. Anwendungen—Technologien—Migration, Springer Vieweg, Wiesbaden, 2014, p. 7). “Industry 4.0” has become a new key term in the context of the “Future of the World of Work”. There are a number of considerations and activities and a stepwise increasing use of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in order to accelerate the implementation of “Industry 4.0”. This has a considerable impact on the skilled employees, above all on skilled workers, master craftsmen and technicians. One of the central questions is whether this group of employees will still find its place in tomorrow’s “intelligent” and digitalized production. This question will be discussed in this article.