Industry 4.0 - manufacturing work of the future

The production will dramatically change in the next few years due to new technical possibilities offered by cheap sensors and networked objects. Therefore the Fraunhofer IAO has conducted a survey to get a clearer understanding of what the future could look like. More than 660 corporate representatives have drawn a significant picture of the future of production work. The main results of the survey are that (1) Automation is possible even for smaller series but human labor remains an important part of the production. (2) Flexibility is still the key factor in the production work in Germany. (3) Industry 4.0 is more than CPS networking. The future includes intelligent data acquisition, storage and distribution of objects and people. (4) The use of decentralized control mechanisms will increase. A complete autonomy of decentralized, self-driven objects will not exist in any time soon. (5) Employees must be qualified on-the-job regarding short-term, less predictable work activities.