Like one day to the next, revolutions follow one another but do not resemble each other. There is little in common between the mechanization of the 1780s, the electrification of the end of the 19th century, the electronics of the 1970s and today’s Industry 4.0. However, all these revolutions brought their lot of discoveries and hopes, as well as anxiety and unknowns. How are Canadian companies and their employees managing the arrival of artificial intelligence and Big Data?
New technologies at the service of competitiveness
Still called the Smart Factory, this revolution was born from a reflection on the future of the manufacturing sector and, more specifically, on the ways to make it ever more productive and flexible. In other words, the company must be able to respond to the client’s expectations with ever more personalization, speed and cost-limiting. The time is past for automation of a single process (Industry 3.0) but rather for digitization of all the company’s assets (Industry 4.0) – from suppliers to consumers. Thus, connectivity of objects and equipment as well as massive processing of data (Big Data) make it possible to create an intelligence, called “artificial”. This digital transformation is not limited to manufacturing processes alone, but relates to business models, management methods as well as the workforce.
Canadian companies reluctant
Undertaking the digital shift is essential to remaining competitive in the face of low production costs of Asian companies and the high adaptability of emerging countries. However, according to Deloitte, “Canadian companies are lagging behind, since 87% of them are not completely (35% not at all) prepared to cope with the advent of advanced technologies.” Believing that they have already reached technological maturity or little convinced of the real benefits of digitization, few Canadian companies have invested the much-touted 7% to 9% of their turnover to stay in the race. Thus, the average investment of a SME in new technologies is less than $100,000, while it should be $261,000. The survival of the company could depend on it.
Employees central to the plant of the future
Every industrial revolution generates a certain legitimate anxiety among employees. It is already accepted that positions that require a limited level of expertise are more at risk than others. Similarly, as Carolyn A. Wilkin, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, points out, “workers whose skills are complementary to the new technologies could fare much better than those whose tasks will be transferred to machines.” The solution is training of employees and recruitment of new skills. But which? Intellectual curiosity and digital aptitudes (social media, web apps, mobile devices) for every employee in the company, creativity and innovation for business executives and senior managers, in order to understand the changing environment. And what functions will have the wind in their sails for a long time yet? Certainly data security, software development, programming, data science, man-machine interaction and analytics.
What could be more normal than to be anxious about the effects of Revolution 4.0, which seems to be holding many surprises in store. However, in the image of Kennedy who asked Americans what they could do for their country, and not what the country could do for them, why shouldn’t the employee position himself as a player, and not a spectator, in this 4th Industrial Revolution?