With Hyper-Learnability Comes Hyper-Productivity
Industry 4.0 requires talent 4.0. The smart factory needs smarter people. Digital transformation in the manufacturing world seems to be moving on two divergent paths: the technology curve and the human curve. Today, the former is an ascendant exponent and the latter is a linear crawl. How then, could the twain meet? Even as the current global crisis seems to portend the acceleration of a digital normal, the manufacturing future cannot be imagined as the stuff of science-fiction, where bots and drones run the shop floor. Now is the time to pull the human curve upwards and converge it with the pace of digital technology. What will bend this curve is learning: the great equalizer which ensures manufacturing remains a distinctly human frontier.
There’s never been a better time to learn. Over the years, productivity has grown, but the pace of productivity has room for growth. The technology change that earmarks Industry 4.0 will push this pace towards the realm of hyper-productivity. And it cannot be realized without hyper-learnability. Where one exists, the other will. At the heart of this change is the human in the factory – learning, doing, evolving – the worker who built the past, now building the future. The tools may have changed, but the purpose remains unchanged.
