The Approach to Industry 4.0 within the Slovak Business Environment

Adriana Grenčíková,Jakub Sokol,Marcel Kordoš

doi:10.3390/socsci8040104

Adriana Grenčíková, Jakub Sokol + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8040104

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Abstract

Academics, executives and top managers have solid, but also diverse, views on the Industry 4.0 issue, as do the employment policymakers. Without urgent and targeted measures to manage the short-term transition and shape the labor force with the skills needed for the future, governments will have to face increasing unemployment and social impacts, while companies will have to deal with a sluggish consumer base. The main goal of this paper is to find out how managers are perceived and informed about the Industry 4.0 concept and how quickly these views are changing. To accomplish this goal, methods such as analysis, synthesis, statistical methods and logical deduction are to used along with the conducted survey being executed by a questioner method. The conducted survey presented by the authors in this paper aims to support the discussion and open up opportunities for further action by providing views to HR managers in strategic employers who are among the leading representatives of new trends and are the key actors in the implementation of future labor development strategies in the Slovak Republic.

Highlights

The ongoing discussions on the impact of changes in employment often lead to fundamentally divergent views among those who expect unlimited opportunities in emerging types of jobs along with the prospects for increasing workers’ productivity and relieving workers from physical and routine work, as well as those who expect massive compensation for the work of human beings and the transfer of jobs to other countries
The presented study analyzes the impact of Industry 4.0 on Slovak enterprises and the current state of automation and robotics implementation in these enterprises
The addressed businesses expressed their approach to Industry 4.0 applications

Summary

Introduction

The ongoing discussions on the impact of (unfavorable) changes in employment often lead to fundamentally divergent views among those who expect unlimited opportunities in emerging types of jobs along with the prospects for increasing workers’ productivity and relieving workers from physical and routine work, as well as those who expect massive compensation for the work of human beings and the transfer of jobs to other countries. A lot of data shows that while the prognoses differ across sectors and regions, significant changes are occurring. The issue is whether this change will result in a massive outflow of workers or the emergence of new jobs. Slovak entrepreneurs are relatively conservative in terms of implementing any changes and often do not know how to catch up with the trends in advanced economies because the Slovak economy still uses its comparative advantage of cheap labor

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