Changes in production work: Industry 4.0

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270398941

The research project will analyze change processes of production work in the context of intelli-gently automated production systems. It focuses on new technological development trends push-ing new patterns of factory automation which are termed recently as Industry 4.0. Technologi-cally, this concept is based on autonomously acting technological components and systems. On the one hand, this concept can be characterized as a technological vision. On the other hand, in the medium term this concept will lead to sustainable change processes of industrial production processes. Therefore, it can be assumed that the diffusion of these concepts will clearly affect the patterns of production work. The research project aims at an empirically based contribution to the debate about the develop-ment of production work in the context of intelligently automated production systems. The basic assumption is that the diffusion of such systems does not lead to a homogeneous pattern of pro-duction work. Rather, it leads to a deepened segmentation of work due to task specialization and skill requirements. Because of the specific novelty of the subject of analysis the project is of an explicitly explanatory character. Therefore, it is based on a broad combination of qualitative re-search methods like guided interviews with experts, case study analysis and expert workshops.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants