Chairs

Industry 4.h Chair

Improving the human place in the future industry

Respond to the human and managerial issues generated by the transition to the sustainable industry of the future, at the service of society.

Many industrial companies have already digitized their factories, albeit to varying degrees. The consequences are far-reaching in terms of work transformation, changes in skills requirements, team management and man-machine coupling. While there are many general initiatives to support Industry 4.0 in general, there are very few on the human challenges of this transformation, which are nonetheless major.

In this context, the Industry 4.h Chair, launched in April 2022, aims to respond to the human and managerial issues generated by the transition to the sustainable industry of the future, at the service of society.

The ultimate aim will be to equip the industrial ecosystem with methods and a system for updating skills, based on research and school-industry collaboration, enabling the design of sustainable Industry 4.0 organizations and training curricula.

The originality of the Industry 4.h Chair is to combine the perspective of industrial engineering with that of management science: to understand and support the performance of the industrial process, particularly through technology and its interfaces with people, by drawing on the involvement and skills of employees and managers to contribute to overall performance.

"Companies have heavily digitized their factories causing major consequences in terms of work transformation, changes in required skills, team management and man-machine coupling. Many initiatives exist to support Industry 4.0 in general, but there are very few on the human issues linked to this transformation, even though they are major! With the Industry 4.h Chair, we'll be doing our bit to design the factories of tomorrow, factories that combine the performance of machines and people."

Andreas Riel

Chairholder and Professor of Industrial Engineering and Innovation at Grenoble INP Industrial Engineering

"Industry 4.0 is a global transformation that requires not "siloed" expertise, but crossed views on the evolution of work and organization. The Industry 4.h Chair is precisely this space that will enable us to cross viewpoints and analyses: industrial engineering, human resources management, shop floor management, performance management, etc."

Christian Defélix

Professor of Human Resources Management at Grenoble IAE-INP, and co-founder of the Chair

We are facing a time of transition, driven by environmental and societal upheavals. New technologies will only provide a partial response to the industrial renewal needed to rethink production and distribution systems for goods and services. The human dimension remains the key to industrial transformation. It is the aim of the Industry 4.h Chair to study how people can make the best use of technologies to organize and manage industrial resilience.

Pr Frédéric Noël

Director Grenoble INP - Génie industriel, UGA – School of Industrial Engineering and Management

« L’IA, et en particulier l’IA générative, est en train de transformer l’industrie en facilitant entre autres la robotique avancée, l’optimisation des processus de production basée sur l’IA, et l’assistance aux travailleurs. Cependant, les êtres-humains doivent être capables de suivre cette transformation ultra-rapide. L’opérationnalisation de l’éthique de l’IA y joue un rôle essentiel, alors que la mise en œuvre des valeurs éthiques représente un défi gigantesque. D’une part, il faut veiller à ce que l’IA soit utilisée uniquement pour soutenir les personnes et, surtout, ne pas leur nuire. D’autre part, il se doit d’offrir aux employés des opportunités de formation et qualification grâce auxquelles ils peuvent participer à la transformation et se sentir responsabilisés. Ici, le facteur clé est clairement de générer de la confiance à tous les niveaux de l’entreprise grâce à la mise en avant des valeurs humaines par rapport à la puissance de la transformation technologique. »

Martina Flatscher

AI Strategist at ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany)

« Rejoindre la Chaire Internationale Industry 4.h représente pour moi une opportunité d’agir sur un objectif fondamental : l’impact positif sur l’humain. En tant qu’ingénieur, je place toujours le social et les enjeux sociétaux au cœur de mes priorités. L’avènement de l’industrie 4.0, tout en dynamisant le secteur industriel, a soulevé des défis significatifs sur le plan humain et managérial. Notre rôle en tant qu’ingénieurs et experts en génie industriel et sciences de gestion est crucial pour identifier et mettre en œuvre des stratégies d’accompagnement efficaces durant cette transition vers l’industrie du futur. Un axe majeur de notre mission est de former et d’intégrer dans ce nouveau paradigme industriel ceux qui sont les plus éloignés de l’emploi, en adhérant à une démarche profondément éthique. »

Ikram Ahidar

Doctor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Chair program manager

Our missions

The main mission of this Chair is to contribute to the sustainable evolution of professions and organizations in the industry of the future, in the face of the growing predominance of new technologies in modern factories. This goes by enabling humans to work with machines, while reinforcing the strengths of each: creativity, ethics, flexibility, intelligence, sensitivity, and the spirit of collaboration of humans shall be complemented by machines’ precision, power, repeatability and indefatigability. Thereby, the Chair’s contributions lie mainly in analyzing and understanding the evolution of industrial professions and organizations. On this basis, our mission is to find ways of training a wide range of potential future employees in these new professions, including the cross-disciplinary skills that are essential to them. With this contribution, we will make the professions of the industry of the future more accessible to those who today do not feel ready to take them on. To reach our target and thus create impact, building numerous partnerships with training organizations is an important part of this mission.

The Chair's founding partners and sponsors

Research and training areas

With the introduction of 4.0 technologies in factories,

How can we rethink work organization and day-to-day management?
How are our businesses evolving?
What new jobs are being created?
How can we anticipate and deploy the associated workstation adjustments?
How can we train workers to use new technologies and fit into new organizations?
How can we avoid job losses due to the replacement of man with technology?
How can we make jobs in the industry of the future accessible to a wide range of job seekers?
How can we increase the number of women working in the industry of the future?
What skills do operators and technicians already need, and above all, what skills will be required in the next stages of automation 4.0?

These are just some of the questions that researchers will be seeking to answer in collaboration with companies. The main lines of research are therefore strongly oriented towards training methods and strategies for the new technologies, professions and organizations of the industry of the future.