Industry 4.0, aka the fourth industrial revolution, will completely change workplaces and workspaces. If now we work in an interactive environment that only “answers” our requests, then in the future offices, industrial sites and retail will become practically “animated” thanks to artificial intelligence, big data, virtual and augmented reality, as well as the Internet of Things. True, all these technologies will need an even more reliable energy "rear" than now.
Let's make a reservation right away that we will focus mainly on changes affecting the bulk of workers in the commercial sector and their least specific jobs - those that are very similar to each other regardless of the specific industry.
7 top job-changing trends
Technologies come into development and production that allow creating a more “customized” product. Support for this product will become almost continuous, which will require great flexibility from the specialist - during the working day he will have to switch between dozens of different tasks, adapt to rapid changes in the essence of these tasks, and reconsider their approaches to solving them.
The interaction with technology will become even closer.And as the technology becomes more complex, it will require programming skills to operate it, and from a wide range of specialists who have not previously been involved in this. It will not be easy, but only at first - over time, friendly interfaces, augmented reality and simplified programming will reduce the complexity of interacting with technology. But will all specialists survive this transition? Is not a fact.
The specialist's tools (software, technology, practices) will be updated much faster than we are used to, and we will have to adapt to this constantly and quickly. More specialists with higher education will be needed, as well as intensive, long-term and specialized corporate educational programs.
Project teams will become more flexible.There will be more short-term projects (due to continuous product support), which means that more participants will have to be involved to implement them. Moreover, the team will include specialists from different departments, different companies, different countries, and sometimes the clients themselves will join them with their user experiences. Such teams will quickly assemble, often change their composition and disband.
People will have to think, analyze and interpret more often.Deepening automation and robotization, especially in manufacturing, will free a person from routine tasks, but will leave him alone with tons of information, even processed. AI can paint a picture like Rembrandt, but who will appreciate if he did well? And arguing about it with reason? In the future, specialists will often have to analyze, interpret, draw conclusions and take responsibility for this.
In 2016, AI really painted a picture like Rembrandt. Since then, AI has also learned to write books and compose music. Source: YouTube channel The Next Rembrandt
"Remote" will cover more jobs. Technologies of augmented and virtual reality will help, which will free many specialists from the need to personally be present when solving elementary problems, training personnel, etc.
Technology will dramatically change the business models and structure of companies. Accordingly, all employees must be prepared to change roles as part of this adaptability. Yesterday's warehouse loading manager may have to learn how to monitor AGV movement by becoming an operator.
So, almost all the changes that await specialists and their jobs in the future come from new technologies that are on everyone's lips: artificial intelligence (AI), big data, augmented / virtual reality (AU / AV), Internet of Things (Internet of Things, IoT). How will they change our offices, our workplaces, and ourselves?
Artificial intelligence: e-HR, chatbots, and nurturing offices
According to various estimates, from 9% to 50% of jobs can be automated using AI until 2030, although most often scientists agree on the 10-30% range. And it will affect almost all jobs in one way or another. How?
Human Resources.First and foremost, AI will change the way people are hired and hired, especially in high turnover industries. Artificial intelligence will help automate the processing of primary information about candidates and conduct interviews. In terms of sign language, speech patterns, and answers to standard questions, services like Filtered and HireVue conduct an initial selection of candidates by analyzing video interviews. Accordingly, there is no need to view resumes, draw up and maintain interview schedules, and form shortlists of candidates. This frees up core HR staff, while giving managers a better roster and better focus on communicating with the selection winners. According to Filtered, the use of their AI HR manager increased the conversion rate of interviews to hiring from 4% to 60%.the share of rejected CVs decreased from 23% to 3%.
Video guides are already appearing on the network telling how to properly record an interview for a HR robot. Source: YouTube channel Primal Career
New communications. During the working day, company employees exchange data. Information is often scattered, can be stored in different types or formats, and have access restrictions. In this case, the exchange of data is not always the responsibility of the employee. Chatbots that have access to all corporate information and can understand simple human language will help solve the problem. IT specialists will be freed from questions like "I pressed the button and everything was gone", and instead of AXO to the question "Where do we usually order pizza for our birthday?" the bot will answer.
"Smart" office.Artificial intelligence combined with IoT devices in the office (also called smart office, or Internet of Workplace, IoW) will completely change the experience of being at work. For example, in the Edge office complex in Amsterdam, such a system leads an employee to a free space in the parking lot or remembers his favorite coffee, the lighting mode of the workplace. AI helps implement the principle of employee mobility: Edge has no personal seats, and the system assigns the optimal workplace for performing certain tasks - a free table, a conference room, a private chair for phone calls. The system uses 20 thousand sensors in the building, AI can also monitor the well-being of workers and monitor their health. For instance,the Humanscale service records the length of time an employee is sitting or standing and signals him to take a walk or sit down. She analyzes the adherence to recommendations by different departments of the company and even arranges competitions.
As you can see, describing only one of the technologies - artificial intelligence - we have already touched upon three other key components of the smart office of the future: Big Data, AR / VR and IoT.
The Edge office building is not only the smartest, but also the greenest - at the service of conservationists charging for electric cars. Source: YouTube channel Bloomberg
Big Data: Vanging Layoffs, New Taylorism and Ideal Offices
According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), companies that use big data for decision-making increase their productivity by 5-6% compared to other firms. The collection and analysis of a wide variety of information will completely change the work of HR, the decision-making system and the office space itself.
People Analytics. Big Data can be used in assessing personnel and their condition: continuous analysis of employee productivity will increase efficiency or even allow you to abandon the familiar to all HR personnel "Report 360". For example, the Russian development Yva is able to predict their burnout and dismissal based on the analysis of employee behavior, the tone of their correspondence with colleagues, performance indicators and engagement several months before they apply.
Analysis of productivity. The second direction is to improve productivity, both of the employees themselves and of management decisions. Big Data is especially useful in assessing the effectiveness of transferring employees to remote locations: in 2016, a large American insurance company transferred an entire department of employees to remote locations: it turned out that these specialists work 18-22% more efficiently from home than from the office. In the future, such studies will become one of the drivers of the development of distance employment.
"Smart" office design.Zaha Hadid's London office has created a department that analyzes office space based on big data and applies this knowledge to the design of spaces. Big Data allows you to understand which office spaces are used intensively, but at the same time remain cramped (say, coffee points), while a conference room can be empty most of the time. According to Steelcase, which produces such analytical systems, up to half of office squares are practically not used. To some extent, Big Data will give food for thought on new concepts of the scientific organization of labor (STO), which was promoted at the turn of XX-XXI by Frederick Taylor, who believed that in order to maximize the productivity of workers, the process and working conditions should be maximized.
Internet of Things: smart coffee machines, robotic avatars for the boss and "with your own"
According to Zion Market Research, by 2024 the market for smart office devices will grow to $ 49.7 billion. They will help you accomplish three main tasks.
Improved productivity. The Internet of Things literally "animates" all the devices in the office. Printers themselves report the end of paper or ink before it happens, coffee machines adapt to an office filled with cappuccino lovers, smart bulbs such as those from Sengled and LIFX, adjust the lighting mode popular in open space, etc. The office space will not only be interactive, but also "live", which will save a lot of time on "setting up" or adapting to it.
Robotization.The IoT will populate offices with more robots than we see now, and will allow them to be integrated into the office ecosystem. Already, SoftBank Pepper robots welcome supermarket visitors around the world, helping them navigate the store's topography and assortment. In the office, in the future, such assistants will replace or significantly reduce the labor costs of the receptionists. Another offshoot of this technology is telerobots (Ava, Owl, StyleView Telepresence Cart, etc.). These are machines, which will be "possessed" by the absent from the workplace, and, for example, participate in meetings or give orders to certain employees. The office ecosystem will direct them to the right conference room.
It's scary to think what applications the telebot would have come up with, Michael Scott, the head of a paper company from the famous 2000s documentary "Office". Source: YouTube channel Record
BYOD. The third area is the inclusion of personal gadgets of employees (Bring Your Own Device, BYOD) into the office IoT ecosystem. As more and more tasks will be performed using personal smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and trackers, there is an increasing security problem when integrating these devices into the Internet of Workplace. To neutralize threats in the framework of the IoT, automatic measures of self-defense of the system will operate against unauthorized actions of a particular gadget, for example, automatic termination of the connection to the network if someone's smart watch for some reason tries to download secret documents from the boss's folders.
AR / VR: online excursions, “ghosts” of colleagues, remote electricians
According to PwC, by 2030, about 23.5 million jobs will involve the use of virtual and augmented reality - 27 times more than now.
Space models. First and foremost, augmented and virtual reality will change sales. Sales managers for complex products will be able to save a lot of time on road shows, real estate agents will show virtual 3D models of apartments and houses without visiting the construction site. In other words, many products can be modeled remotely (for example, clothes), as well as the ability to "move" managers to the client without their personal presence.
Models of people.That being said, augmented reality will certainly reinforce the trend towards creating remote jobs. For a personal presence at the meeting, a three-dimensional model of the required employee will be enough, which will be able to make a presentation or make a report.
Device models. Augmented and virtual reality will find application in production or in infrastructure. For example, electricians can be replaced by remotely controlled robots. As soon as an accident occurs anywhere on the line, the electrician puts on the VR goggles and connects to the remote machine at the scene. By remotely controlling it, including with the help of VR-gloves, he eliminates the accident - being, for example, at home.
Will your hands get tired? Source: YouTube channel Bloomberg
Let's summarize. New technologies will increase the efficiency of workplaces, reduce time costs, free up millions of workers (and reorient workers' heads to new tasks), make workplaces more “networked” and less centralized. At the heart of this revolution is a system of gadgets, robots and sensors, united by communication with cloud databases and artificial intelligence. According to Statista, in 2018 there were 22 billion devices connected to IoT in the world, and by 2030, according to the organization's forecast, their number will grow to 50 billion. There is also a more daring estimate of the British IoT device manufacturer Arm, whose experts predict 1 trillion devices by 2035.
So, there will be more and more devices, especially in the IoT ecosystem, which includes sensors, sensors and other peripherals. Moreover, many of them will work over long distances and in different environments, say in water or in concrete. All this brings to the fore the problem of power management of these devices.
Can Industry 4.0 be unplugged and what happens?
In parallel with the introduction of new technologies in the workplace, the so-called energy transition continues: humanity is replacing traditional, more stable, but not environmentally friendly energy sources with renewable ones. Solar, wind, geothermal power plants will need a complex system for storing and distributing energy, which at first will be unstable and vulnerable, say, to natural disasters.
The main threats to electricity supply in this context are:
- power failure, which can occur, for example, due to a lightning strike or technical problems at the supplier;
- instantaneous voltage drop, say, due to the launch of a nearby powerful energy consumer;
- Surge (also often due to a lightning strike), which almost always leads to loss of data or damage to equipment;
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For consumers, say, small firms or enterprises, all this threatens problems with data loss, equipment failure and losses. It is worth remembering at least that even a simple 1C after an emergency power outage often starts to work incorrectly, gives errors, and some data is lost. More sophisticated technologies like AI or IoT are even more vulnerable. Moreover, a power outage can even be dangerous for employees who are in the most interactive environment of a "smart" office. Thus, robots and cobots can lose control over their actions, which will lead to injuries for their human counterparts.
All of these problems can be solved using uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). First, the UPS keeps the devices running continuously, preventing them from shutting down. The UPS can also work in conjunction with generators, giving them sufficient time to start up in the event of a power outage.
Secondly, a UPS prevents damage and data loss, which is so important to Big Data and IoT. Without a UPS, data stored by devices subject to sudden system power outages can be damaged or lost entirely. Together with the power management software, the UPS can ensure the normal shutdown of the system.
Third, the UPS prevents damage to equipment caused by power surges and surges. Line-interactive and online UPS systems continuously monitor incoming power.
The use of uninterruptible power supplies is scalable for different tasks. In particular, the Eaton UPS line consists of dozens of devices for both individual use, say, for remote workers, and for large industrial or office buildings.
Three common UPS topologies that provide different degrees of equipment protection. Source: Eaton
However, energy management in the networks of the future is not limited to installing the right equipment. Smart systems require smart power management. To this end, solutions such as Eaton Intelligent Power Software are being developed - intelligent power management systems for IT equipment. This software manages all grid-connected power infrastructure, launches virtual machine migration plans, and shuts down non-critical devices to keep the business running during a power outage. Easy integration with leading virtualization environments allows you to manage these systems from a single window.
Using Intelligent Power as an example, you can disassemble the composition of such software - it consists of three basic parts:
- UPS Companion, (SOHO);
- Intelligent Power Protector (IPP) — , , Eaton ;
- Intelligent Power Manager (IPM) — ePDU, , — - .
Going forward, flexible and simple power management systems are ideal for the complex ecosystem of the office of the future.
Thus, it can be seen that although the bright future of smart IoW offices and AI-hunters has not yet arrived everywhere, developers are already implementing and developing solutions that provide its reliable foundation. Today, changes are happening quickly, and it is possible and necessary to prepare for it not only for users of new technologies, but also for those who build and maintain them.