Industry 4.0 and the fourth industrial revolution explained

Industry 4.0 is the digital transformation of manufacturing/production and related industries and value creation processes. Industry 4.0 is used interchangeably with the fourth industrial revolution and represents a new stage in the organization and control of the industrial value chain.

Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is expected to change how we live, work, and communicate; it is also likely to change the things we value and the way we value them in the future. Presently, we can already see changing business models and employment trends.

 According to The World Economic Forum, an estimated 65% of kids enrolling in primary education today will end up working in jobs that haven’t been created yet. Automation and artificial intelligence are change agents in 4IR that will make certain groups of employees redundant, replacing them with new workers with the needed skills or with machines that do the job cheaper. Gone are the days where students go to college or university to study for a degree that will set them up with a job for life.

With technological advances, jobs with these three qualities are most likely to be automated:

  • repetitive
  • based on rules
  • involve limited or well-defined physicality
  1. Complex problem solving
  2. Critical thinking
  3. Creativity
  4. People management
  5. Coordinating with others
  6. Emotional intelligence
  7. Judgement and decision making
  8. Service orientation
  9. Negotiation
  10. Cognitive flexibility

e key to future job creation:

  • creative —everything from scientific discovery to creative writing and entrepreneurship
  • social interaction—robots just don’t have the kind of emotional intelligence that humans do
  • physical dexterity and mobility—millennia of hiking mountains, swimming lakes and dancing practice gives humans extraordinary agility and physical dexterity