At the core of the Up-Skill project is the recognition that Industry 4.0 the application of digital technologies to industrial processes, production management and supply chains, as presently configured, is a potential threat as well as a benefit to the social and economic wellbeing of Europe.
Another key issue for European skills is the loss of essential craft skills. Despite the wide applicability of robots, automation and computer-controlled machines, there are limits to what automation and robotics can achieve.
The Up-Skill project to identify potential routes for a shift toward more human-centric, sustainable and resilient production – what has been termed Industry 5.0. Our main focus is on human-centricity – examining how digital technology deployment can be encouraged toward improving and up-skilling work rather than replacing and de-skilling it.
The research rationale is that the introduction of these new technologies will cause disturbances in the sociomaterial fabric comprising the firms (identifiable primarily through new and changing roles and distributions of responsibility), effects which can then be followed by the ethnographers. The ethnographers are focusing on how different technology choices create knock-on effects in existing roles and the creation of new roles, the focus on new innovation and management practice and other practices. Of particular interest are management practices that reflect the I5.0 ethic and how these practices are entangled in, and with, other organizational practices, skills, economic conditions, finances, cultures and changing technology.
As the project progresses, we will assess the degree to which I5.0 practices are present and emerging (or even flourishing!) within the cases, using a I5.0 state of readiness tool we are developing. From this assessment, and drawing on insights and examples from the ethnographic work, we will also begin to design and create training materials for managers. These materials will be aimed at promoting the I5.0 ethic. The project will also draw together all of the case study materials (including insights from the technology implementation and support, insights from the state of readiness tool and the developed training materials onto a single platform, the Up-Skill platform. The platform will ultimately contain hundreds of thousands of words of text and many images – including hand drawn images by our project artist. In order to make this material accessible to anyone, the platform is being designed to be interrogatable via an AI-driven interface. This intelligent interface will collate materials and insights in response to open and pre-set queries - saving the inquirer hours in the process.
