Experience or routine? A different view of the relationship between Industry 4.0 and employment

The advance of digitalisation demands that employees can deal with complexity and transformation and respond with confidence in situations which are impossible to plan. We know a great deal about the formal qualification structure of employees in Germany, but very little about informal demands such as these. The work capacity index introduced here focusses on experience as a dynamic resource for shaping Industry 4.0. The index thus represents a marked contrast to studies which forecast the potential consequences of digitalisation in terms of technical feasibility and by means of allocating routine or non-routine activities.