As students and professionals stepping into this new era, the prospects are interesting as well as challenging. The opportunities of employment in this new paradigm calls upon a set of skills. Let us look at them.
1. Networking and IoT
The industry will require a large pool of Networking and IoT experts. Smart factories will relate be connected to their fabrication and material handling equipment in real time. Smart metering and automated infrastructure have already made headway into Power Utilities companies. Similarly, the applications across industries will be infinite.
2. Data Architects and Scientists
The huge number of networked equipment will generate voluminous data which will need human insights and resourcefulness to make sense. We shall need a lot of Data Architects and Data Scientists to device methods to store, maintain and process this data to make meaningful inferences. We shall need a lot of algorithms and programs to be written and AI codes generated to do the concluding, and even some of the deciding, for us.
3. Development Capabilities
It is envisaged that there will be a need of specialists who are well-versed in real-time operating systems and the programming languages that help build and run them, such as Python, Ruby, C, C++, Java and others.
4. Cybersecurity
The opportunities presented by Industry 4.0 as unprecedented. At the same time, the risks that accompany our wireless and interconnected technologies are significant too. The cyberattacks committed using internet-connected devices have exploded by more than 600 percent since 2017, according to IBM.
5. Design Mindset
Along with technology, the new age organisations will have to bring about a mindset change among its employees. The new recruits will be appreciated if they come equipped with the concepts of Design Thinking. Design thinking aims to discover key insights and define the correct courses of action when developing new innovative products and services. Through design thinking, the correct balance of customer needs, technology enablers, and business models is achieved, even under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
6. Digital Transformation
A bottom up digital transformation needs to be adopted by companies as they proceed on the roadmap of Industry 4.0. It starts from solving needs at the product and business unit levels in the company, rather than taking a top-down approach. Starting small and building quickly permits learning from customer feedback with minimal risk.