The concept of Industry 4.0 was reportedly first used by Bosch in a trade fair in Hannover in 2011. The idea was to maximise productivity by making the machines communicate among themselves as well as work in a coordinated manner as per pre-decided algorithms. It was believed that production systems can scale up and down easily; further, the industry 4.0 tools will help improve resource utilisation and optimise the supply chain. As COVID-19 is forcing a new normal, is there a change in our journey of transitioning to Industry 4.0?

How the new normal is impacting the journey?

The pandemic has impacted all walks of our lives. We have started leading our lives in ways different from those in the past. Many of us have started buying the essentials and provisions online; people in managerial roles in enterprises are discussing with their colleagues and other stakeholders over video conferences to arrive at decisions – small and big; factories have made changes to the layout to facilitate social distancing among employees. Person to person contact is being minimised everywhere.

Given this backdrop, it is natural that companies have to quickly move into digitisation and automation so that they can leverage the new advances in technology to improve productivity and at the same time become more agile in dealing with the variations in demand for their products. Industry 4.0 is precisely focused on all these.

Why Industry 4.0 isn’t ubiquitous yet?

Many organisations are yet to deploy these tools either due to their lack of awareness and access or due to their unwillingness to rock the boat. However, the transition to greater automation will get hastened in many cases because organisations are facing greater volatility than ever before and thus, have to be more agile than ever before to ramp up and ramp down their production, supply chain, sales and service in alignment with the changes in the market dynamics.

Secondly, organisations have started looking for greater efficiency in everything they do. Connected devices can make the flow of information seamless and quick so that activity levels in all parts of the organisation can be in sync leading to further minimisation of waste and greater efficiency of the production processes. Despite this knowledge, many haven’t been able to afford the costs of implementing the solutions yet; and some times, they are waiting for the right opportunity when the ROI is meaningful for them.

Where is the case for Industry 5.0?

Over the last decade, leading organisations in the world have implemented industry 4.0 in varying degrees and realised that there are micro markets which have very specific needs that are not being fully met by them. The production processes have to be customised in a significant way to cater to a range of micro markets. In a way, it’s a déjà vu in favour of human skills and ingenuity which shows in the product, almost like a piece of art.

If someone wants to buy a car with a certain combination of features, the options for a common customer are non-existent to rare. Can we think of a day when a customer can choose features in a car as we choose among a variety of choices while ordering a pizza or a salad? It calls for a huge change in the organisation across all its functions from manufacturing to sales and service. We need a greater amount of connect between the man and the machine so that the automation in manufacturing processes adjust the process parameters accordingly and control the inputs suitably.  This is Industry 5.0 for us and will surely start getting implemented across the leading organisations by 2030.

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Need the right environment

India had a thriving manufacturing economy in the 18^th and 19^th century. We lost our way due to the unfavourable policies during the British period and the changing world order in terms of technology, skills and investments. We need the enablement that makes us relevant and competitive in the world market.

Services industry in India has grown since the ’90s because entrepreneurs had the ideas and the determination to put the ideas into action. They could access the required capital, take advantage of talent supply in terms of the educated youth India was producing then, find their way through the corridors of power to amenable outcomes and exploit the market opportunities.

The manufacturing industry is seeing market demand for domestic consumption as well as exports. It needs the enablement in terms of access to funds at the right cost of capital; availability of skilled talent, fair legal system concerning labour, land and taxes. They need consistent implementation of the laws. The sector needs robust infrastructure for transportation of goods and cost-effective inputs for production.

Most of these fall in the realm of a policy framework which manufacturers can collaboratively work with the governing bodies to develop and transform. Leaders have this critical role to play in public affairs. What else can their HR Teams do?

Collaboration with stakeholders in the ecosystem is critical

The ecosystem of a manufacturing company is complex, right from suppliers, partners and distributors to employees, technology partners, training institutes and government bodies. An organisation’s success depends upon how well one is able to leverage all these stakeholders.

The HR team can play a role in nurturing some of these relations and shaping the future of the talent supply pipeline to the organisation. At the same time, one can build timeless value for the employer brand by the behaviours one demonstrates over a period of time. Introducing real-life practical projects to the students in the institutions, guiding students through those, shaping the curriculum to providing probationary work opportunities are possibilities.

Similarly, HR team can help the supplier organisations apply the best practices to attract, develop and retain best talent and enhance performance results. These would help the supplier bring its costs down and improve its sustainability, thus deepening the strategic engagement between the two organisations. This will ultimately benefit the organisation.

Similarly, one can work in industry bodies and peer groups to spread the best practices and help the players in the ecosystem to get better and raise the bar consistently. Like Toyota Production System and many other quality initiatives like kaizen, Kanban, six sigma, lean etc have become commonplace, HR can collaborate with the others in solving a range of challenges.

Firstly align with business

Every business has its own context and hence, its unique priorities. Hence, mindless copy-paste of best practices might not yield the desired results. For example, an organisation in expansion mode is executing its growth plans while another in diversification needs work on culture-building apart from the growth. Someone might be facing challenges from cost leaders in the market and hence is looking to revamp its technology, marketing and costing strategies. Our HR strategies have to align these and behaviours have to emerge from these plans.

India’s manufacturing output is merely 3% of the world’s output while countries like China, US, Japan, South Germany and Korea do a lot more. Countries like Vietnam and Taiwan have already emerged as strong hubs. Bangladesh is already a large hub for textiles; we could see many other countries emerge as such strong hubs in the time ahead. India has a strong domestic market and the strength of democratic processes, talent supply and supply chain.

All the stakeholders need to work harmoniously for India to take a quantum leap in its manufacturing output.

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First, a large part of these people were migrant workers; many of them left for their home towns when various State governments initiated lockdown. Further, many others panicked when pan-India lockdown was announced; they have gone away to their villages or home towns to unite with their respective families at this hour of crisis.

Secondly, many families being in lockdown condition have been ordering items of essential needs for home delivery. The retailers and small businesses are looking for additional hands to cater to these needs. After the situation stabilises, they will let these people go.

Most number of people in India are employed by MSMEs, construction sites and large factories and supply chains. And another large segment of our people work independently as micro-enterprises. All of them have been under lockdown; so, most people in India are without work right now. As soon as normalcy is restored, the pent-up demands in many industries will come back to play and in a matter of 3-4 weeks, normal levels of  work will restart in construction sites, manufacturing plants and the supply chains. Soon enough, the MSMEs and the micro-enterprises will start running as usual.

A Lull Phase

Gig workers have no work through the lockdown period. Exceptions are the essential commodities and IT sector to a large extent. The IT professionals and functional consultants who work as gig workers in IT sector are not impacted severely though the future is uncertain. The gig workers with the skills in advertising, media, sales, HR, finance, supply chain and operations will not have opportunities until the companies gets back to normal operation.

Learning and Evolving during the Crisis

Companies will learn their lessons through this crisis, there will be major impact on the flow of capital and talent across countries in post-covid era. Companies would like to keep their costs flexible so that they are able to adapt easily. They would increasingly for flexible options of staffing.

Social security measures are certainly an issue for all of us in India. We might see people buying their own insurance covers and the industry innovating new products which will give the cover they are looking for. Social norms are evolving and will evolve faster in post-covid era; people in cities will prefer high-risk high-reward careers and would shift comfortably between full-rime jobs and gig-work. While the attraction towards full-time job isn’t going to pass, they may prefer a gig work with a larger employer brand or an assignment which could raise their market value to a full-time job in a nondescript firm which may not give the booster to his or her career in the long-run.

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The disruption is not surprising.

We were able to lift heavy objects easily and move them from one place to the other using steam engines and various other mechanical ways. Then came electricity which helped us with faster and better machines. We mass-produced several goods at unheard-of speed and superb accuracy. We stopped using animals to do manual work because machines could do those easier and better. Eventually, batch production methods and factories replaced the ways clothes were woven, footwear was made, building materials were produced, tools and precision equipment were manufactured. In the process, craftsmen and artists who knew only one way to earn their livelihood lost their jobs to the machines who could bring out the output with great reliability and low efforts. Cost of production came down and the quality of goods went up.

Came the era of electronics and telecommunication which shrunk distances and made information available instantaneously. Products and services could be produced anywhere and made available globally; market boundaries expanded beyond the vistas of one’s home country subject to the policies of the native government. Again in this era of the industrial revolution, we saw business processes changing, large companies failing, successful companies transforming into new business models, digital technologies ruling the roost right from agriculture, construction, manufacturing to banking, healthcare, education and governments.

Undoubtedly, 4IR with the advent of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, internet of things, augmented reality, analytics and biosciences have started disrupting the way goods and services are sold, produced, stored and delivered. Our habits and outlooks are changing; socio-cultural norms are transforming and geo-political changes are taking place. These will impact the way we live our lives and earn our livelihoods.

Read Also: 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Build a Team of Top Sales People

Schools and colleges need a new mandate!

Most of our educational institutes have annual calendars. Before they can think of changing their syllabi and pedagogy for the next year, industry launches new products, platforms and ideas. Hence, it is impossible for any educational institute to impart the knowledge and skills that will make the graduating students ready for the industry.

Let us take the example of a driving school which provides short courses spanning a few hours of training that is aimed at making its students good drivers. The courses are focused on teaching road signs and driving skills. One wonders if this certification is enough for a student to emerge as a good driver in today’s context.

We have a plethora of situations right from driving one’s own car, using the self-drive scooters and cars to riding on the congested city roads and the off-roads. Drivers have to deal with the cops of various cities and towns of India, the eventualities on the roads of our country and adapting to the norms prevalent about giving way to others! If you are an experienced driver, you would relate to each of these situations very well and agree that the training in most driving schools fall way below the demands of being a capable driver.

In the era of 4IR, we are going to see disruptions of various kinds at a faster pace than ever before. So, we should not expect our school or college to equip us with skills that will be relevant to start on a job productively as soon as one graduate. Moreover, the job that one starts one’s career might cease to exist in a few years. Many routine tasks will be done by the machines while human beings will perform jobs that need human emotions and judgement. Hence, we must ask our schools and colleges to teach us curiosity and adaptability so that we can unlearn and relearn.

Read Also: Do investors care about diversity?

We have to learn on the job!

Staying with the example of driving licenses and keeping the idea of driverless cars aside, the RTOs (Road Transport Organisations) in India issue more than 10 million fresh licenses each year. We know, most of these licensed drivers are not adequately trained and hence, cannot be expected to deliver the desired results. Most of them learn on-the-job and evolve. The same is true for all other professions.

As 4IR has started, we will see many professions getting outdated and thus, the jobs dying or morphing into something else. We, the people in the labour pool need to keep acquiring new skills which might supplement our current job or acquire something altogether new. We have to forget the concept of having a profession for a lifetime. People will need to either change their profession a few times in their lifetime or keep shuffling between them. For example, we have people going to their farms during the harvest season and working as delivery agents with e-commerce companies in the other times of the year. Farming and delivery of goods are unrelated professions and call for hugely different skills and attitude to perform any of them efficiently. Such gig-working will be more pronounced in the days to come.

Read Also: Engage employees before you do with customers

Our education policy has to promote the idea of learning on the job, and companies have to build the necessary infrastructure of providing on-the-job training for a fairly long time.

Ref: https://medium.com/@swati.siddhartha/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-redefining-the-future-baada5aaa514

http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/9352/WEF_Future_of_Jobs%20(002).pdf

https://www.nicva.org/sites/default/files/d7content/attachments-articles/the_impact_of_the_4th_industrial_revolution_on_jobs_and_the_sector.pdf

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-is-redefining-the-economy-as-we-know-it/

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In 1999, none of us imagined, we would book taxis on Uber and Ola, hotel rooms on Makemytrip, Oyo and Trivago, plan holidays looking at TripAdvisor, decide to watch movies based on reviews on Rotten tomatoes, self-drive cars on Zoomcars, decide on job offers based on Glassdoor ratings and openly air our opinions on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn.

As we are in 2019, can we imagine life in 2040 and prepare for it?

Deglobalisation

Around us, we see more a pronounced trend of nationalism and protectionism of anything that is considered local. Right from food, clothes, education and culture to trade and commerce, there is a move towards taking pride in preferring things that are supposedly in practice among the majority in the local markets. We have seen Huawei facing challenges from the US and many other parts of the world; President Trump called for ‘buy American and hire American’ through an executive order. We keep seeing anti-trust proceedings, taxation issues against some of the US behemoths in different parts of the world; immigration rules getting harder in many parts of the world. China has put barriers for companies like Google in their land. Trade barriers, local laws around taxation, dividend repatriation, investments from foreign countries impact companies who operate in multiple countries. We will see more of these in the years to come until the cycle turns again towards the idea of ‘one world and one people’.

The idea of global market versus local market is not necessarily defined by the geographic boundaries of nations and states. Practices followed elsewhere in the world are sometimes despised upon and some are adapted gleefully as one’s own. For example, English language is very much at the core of our day to day work lives in India; and at the same time, there is an increasing realisation to preserve and practice a local language that we associate ourselves with. There is a drive towards using this local language for transacting business.

Often, there are clashes between the ideas of adapting global practices and preserving local traditions. In the years ahead, we will see more of these in our day to day lives and hence, at the workplaces. HR has to deal with these and get ready now.

Diversity and inclusion will become a crucial cog in the wheel of the organisation. Right from recruiting people, inducting them to managing their performance to building a sense of relatedness and belongingness amongst them are in the domain of HR. Given the context of deglobalisation, global companies have to be flexible in the way they are structured, the values they espouse, the practices they follow in running the business day to day. They have to develop local practices which conform to their purpose and values at the core and at the same time, adapt to the realities of the local market.

Read also: Talent Brand : Build and Leverage

Technology

Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google have been the stars of the tech world. Going forward, we will see new technologies using artificial intelligence, driverless vehicles, drones, robotics, manufacturing methods, alternate forms of energy, storage solutions for energy, data computing and so on.

All of these developments could disrupt the way companies are manufacturing their products, offering their products and services to their customers. Need for talent is likely to undergo huge changes. With the advent of fast changes in the environment, organisations are likely to focus on super-specialisations rather than being generalists. Thus, they will need very few full-time employees and use gig workers and temp employees to keep their business flexible. Their employment contracts with employers will be rewritten. This brings forth an interesting challenge for the HR folks to retain and engage these employees. Usual techniques and approaches to grow commitment and belongingness of employees have to be revamped.

Read also: Turning the tide

Climate change

We all have been seeing the impact of irresponsible behaviours of human beings while growing businesses at a maddening pace. Our world is a very different place than it was three to four decades ago. Thankfully we have started taking interest in sustainability and learning to be more responsible in our behaviours while dealing with customers, partners, our own colleagues and the environment.

In the next few decades, many things are going to change – the energy that we use, the amount of resources we consume, the way we dispose of unused or partially consumed goods. Revamping the work processes and the existing systems is going to be expensive for organisations. Employees need to be reskilled to use the new systems, equipment and processes. HR team has to add resources with the necessary skills and appropriate thinking to the team. It will be a few years until the thinking and expectations of people will align with those of the organisations. We will have to plan for those efforts of transitioning into an organisation with total alignment.

Read also: Are you happy at work?

The decade ahead is going to be challenging for the companies to transition into a new world order in adapting to new tech, deglobalised practices and sustainable way of life.

Ref: https://www.ft.com/content/8f67815e-aa07-11e9-984c-fac8325aaa04

https://hbr.org/2019/12/are-businesses-ready-for-deglobalization?ab=hero-main-text

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The last 10 years after the global financial crisis have been a new era where voices in favour of protecting local industry from non-local companies have grown louder. We see increase in demand to stop migrants from working in the local ecosystem in spite of their competence. We notice spirited arguments against finances from international markets flowing freely into the economy. Sociopolitical factors of our times are pushing the leaders to exhibit protectionism.

4.0 is a game of “And”

While the voice favouring protectionism is growing louder, the voice favouring liberalism is no less. We have strong demands for free inflow of ideas, access to technology developed elsewhere and freedom to export goods and services in a seamless manner across national borders. Rapid changes in technology are taking place as the R&D teams in companies are able to tap into the best talent across countries. Collaboration among universities and similar institutions across countries are helping in this development further. There is a steady rise of global companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon, GE, IBM, Dell, McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Sony, Nokia, Toyota, Samsung, Uber, Ola, Infosys, millions more! We want more and more of them.

We do not want millions of people involved in traditional jobs in agriculture, manufacturing to lose their sources of livelihood to cheaper economies. This is important because they have no other skill which can help them earn their livelihood. And at the same time, we need younger people fulfil their aspirations in the new forces in an economy – automation, artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning. We have to let them use all technology tools available globally and leverage them. We need a fine balance between protectionism and liberalism.

Most of us take a stance that is convenient for us. So, based on our current reality, many of us choose a position that is either extreme right thinking or extreme left thinking. However, in the era of globalisation 4.0, we have to take a centrist position that recognises a new reality that promotes simultaneity of protectionism and liberalism.

Openness to change and flexibility to adapt

Irrespective of what industry sector we work in and what level we are at, we cannot resist changes. In the nineties, banks in India started using computers. We overcame resistance from users, fought cynics who predicted failure of the system and proved to ourselves that change is inevitable.

We could be farmer, craftsman, lawyer, teacher, painter, musician or homemaker, we have to be open to changing the way we lead our life. As more and more technology tools are being available for our day to day usage, it is bound to impact our lives. For example, unless a farmer learns using technology to improve his inputs for farming, revamp the process of farming and leverage all possible methods to access the most potential markets, he will be unable to offer his produce at competitive pricing and might lose his job to someone else who is able to offer better value to the market.

We must be learning proactively and exploring new vistas of doing the same job in an improved way. If we fail to discover ways, we must move on to greener pastures to explore new possibilities. One has to be open to move to new locations, learn new skills from time to time and be ready to reboot one’s career more than once in the lifetime. We do not want to suffer from boiling frog syndrome.

Opportunities galore

Traditionally, the stream of science and technology was considered as the upper class in academics. Bright students pursued subjects in that stream, while those who scored lesser marks in the examinations had to settle down for other subjects such as humanities, commerce and all other fields of work. However, globalisation 4.0 is changing this age-old norm.

As our way of life is changing substantially and slated to change more in the days ahead, we will see demand for a range of skills, right from humanities, sports, music, commerce to science and technology. Irrespective of what subjects we study and degrees we hold, we need to show the spirit of enquiry, live the passion for excellence and stay relevant.

Interesting and challenging times ahead, traversed fearlessly in pursuit of excellence is going to see us win championships in life!

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