KEY ISSUES FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE G20

Source: OECD, adapted from Rüsmann et al. (2015).
Skills requirements for Industrie 4.0 are more interdisciplinary than those for basic digital literacy. Industrie 4.0
creates new operational and organisational structures relying on decision making, co-ordination, control and
support services – a much more complex environment. There is also a need to co-ordinate between virtual and
real machines and plants in production management systems. In general, this means that there are
significantly higher demands placed on all members of the workforce in terms of managing complexity, higher
levels of abstraction and problem solving. Employees are expected to act more on their own initiative, have
excellent communication skills and be able to organise their own work (Smit et al., 2016).
Robotisation provides a useful illustration of how Industrie 4.0 is changing the demand for skills. OECD
(forthcoming b) shows that robots replace certain tasks, previously carried out by humans, while creating the
demand for new tasks to be carried out by workers. As a result, employment will decrease in occupations
comprising tasks that can be automated and will increase in occupations where human labour is
complementary to robots. The balance between substitution and complementarity effects depends on the
robots’ field of applications, with employment falling in some areas and growing in others (Figure 39).