Purpose - The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how Industry 4.0, with a focus on automation, can influence the need for production personnel in production. Industry 4.0 is upon us, therefore it is interesting to see what importance does production personnel have for prodcution today? And how is the production staff's role in production affected by increased automation? Method - In order to fulfil the purpose of this thesis a study was made to enlighten the problem area. Together with literature study, a solid theoretical reference frame was created that further strengthens the problem area. Lastly, interviews were made with three businesses. Once all this information was gathered, an analysis was made, that lead to conclusions. Findings - The result of this study shows that employees today are not as interchangeable as feared. The first step is semi-automation, but that does not equal the cancellation of the working man. Instead there will be a cooperation between the employees and machine. There is a risk that the number of employers in production will decrease, but machines will never replace them entirerly. The result shows that production personnel have no reason to fear technology or see it as a threat, beacuse the employee today is till an important resource. Implications - According to the result, automation as a whole is not as big of a threat today as feared, the first step is instead semi-automation. Since the writer chose to look at bigger companies instead of focusing on smaller ones that lack the possibility to even out the difference between automation and production personnel, it might have been interesting to have their view of the matter. It might have shown a different result. Limitations - This thesis strives to answer above mentioned questions, focus has been put on bigger, and more developed, companies. Furthermore, no attempt has been made to look closer at the employees of these companies, instead all interviews have been made with personnel working at an executive level as well as those knowledgeable in automation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-49510 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Simanaitis, Konrad |
| Publisher | Tekniska Högskolan, Jönköping University, JTH, Logistik och verksamhetsledning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds