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.
Our missions
"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
‘AI, and in particular generative AI, is transforming industry by facilitating advanced robotics, AI-based production process optimisation, and worker assistance, among other things. However, human beings need to be able to keep up with this ultra-fast transformation. The operationalisation of AI ethics plays a key role in this, while the implementation of ethical values represents a huge challenge. On the one hand, we need to ensure that AI is used only to support people and, above all, not to harm them. On the other hand, it must offer employees training and qualification opportunities so that they can participate in the transformation and feel empowered. Here, the key factor is clearly to generate trust at all levels of the company by emphasising human values over the power of technological transformation’.
Martina Flatscher
AI Strategist at ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Germany)
‘Joining the Industry 4.h International Chair is an opportunity for me to act on a fundamental objective: the positive impact on human beings. As an engineer, I always place social and societal issues at the heart of my priorities. The advent of Industry 4.0, while energising the industrial sector, has raised significant human and managerial challenges. Our role as engineers and experts in industrial engineering and management sciences is crucial in identifying and implementing effective support strategies during this transition to the industry of the future. A major part of our mission is to train and integrate into this new industrial paradigm those who are furthest from employment, while adhering to a profoundly ethical approach’.
Ikram Ahidar
Doctor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Chair program manager
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.
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.
L'équipe
Andreas RIEL
Chairholder and Professor of Industrial Engineering and Innovation at Grenoble INP Industrial Engineering
Christian DEFÉLIX
Professor of Human Resources Management at Grenoble IAE-INP, and co-founder of the Chair
Daniel Brissaud
Former Director of Grenoble INP - Génie Industriel, UGA and Professor at Grenoble INP - UGA
François Pichault
Professor at the University of Liège, Belgium
Marta Pinzone
Assistant Professor at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Ikram Ahidar
Doctor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Chair program manager
Jannik Rosemeyer
PhD student at TU Darmstadt University
Anastassiya Zabudkina
PhD student at the University of Liège, Belgium
Esther Bleys
PhD student at the University of Liège, Belgium
Michael Geis
PhD student at TU Darmstadt University
Kanthanet Tharot
PhD student at Grenoble-Alpes University
Jean Marc Thiriet
Professor of digital technologies for the industry of the future
Danusuya Pachimuthu
Research engineer at Milan Polytechnic
Quoc Bao Duong
Technical manager of the Industry 4.0 platform at Grenoble INP - UGA
Camille Devos
Research engineer on the Industry 4.0 platform at Grenoble INP - UGA
Lara Pörtner
PhD student in Data Literacy
Romina Gelardi
PhD student at the University of Liège, Belgium
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