Operator 4.0 – Emerging Job Categories in Manufacturing

With the trends of industry 4.0 and increased degree of digitalization in production plants, it is expected that production plants in future is much more adaptive where they can both self-optimize production parameters as well as self-maintain of standard activities. All though this would reduce manual operations, new work activities are expected in a cyber-physical production plant. For instance, the establishment of digital twins in cloud solutions enabled with Internet of Things (IoT) can result in crafts in maintenance analytics as well as more guided maintenance for the maintenance operator with augmented reality. In addition, more service from external personnel such as the machine builder is expected to be offered in Industry 4.0. In overall, it will be of interest to identify and recommend qualification criteria relevant for a cyber physical production plant that would be implemented in the organisation. The aim of this article is to evaluate the role of operator as well as other relevant job categories in a cyber physical production plant. The result in this paper is a recommended framework with qualification criteria of these job categories. Further research will require more case studies of this framework.