MIS500 The Fourth Industrial Revolution Assignment Sample

Foundations of Information Systems

Introduction to The Fourth Industrial Revolution

According to Weber (2016), the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 refers to the technological upgradation that has generated the platform for innovative use of technology and applications such as artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, big data, internet of things (IoT), and whatnot. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) or Industry 4.0 has characterized itself as the integration of the digital, physical, and practical arena of the global work system with the view to create an innovative yet advanced and most useful tool that capacitates the ease of the working system.

The purpose of the study is to analyze and understand the invent of 4IR and its practical global implication in different facets of business and personal working.

Background of The Study

The rapid and radical shifts in the technological advents and upgradation system have currently given the rise to the Fourth Industrial Revolution that has catered and benefited a great significance to almost every area of work and labor including businesses, manufacturing, servicing, production, human resource management, and also the person or home working (Weber, 2016).

The study takes into account the company iRobot Corp. for the understanding and acknowledgment of the application of the Fourth Industrial Revolution in the area of the home and personal care. iRobot Corporation is a USA based consumer robot company engaged in designing and building of the robotic appliances that provide solutions for the home care and indoor and outdoor cleaning services in order to eliminate the need for manual or labor dependency (iRobot, 2020).

The company is serviced at developing robotic and AI-generated appliances such as vacuum, cleaners, robot mops, and many such home care and cleaning appliances that are the need for everyday human life (Nicholls & Strengers, 2019).

Analysis: Industry 4.0 Technology and Human Replacement

According to Lom et al. (2016), the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution or 4IR has enabled the conventional modes of practice and serviceability into the smart, technologically aided, and automated services in a real-time manner. With the passage of ages, the business and service provision activities and the cycle has seen a robust change that has, in the current generation of the globalized force and cross-cultural adjustment and acceptances have certainly cost the ease of multidimensional workforce and global integrity but has also raised the exhaustive use of the labor kind for the paradigm needs satisfaction that has catalyzed the introduction of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

According to Prassler et al. (2016), artificial intelligence and robotics as the generators of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) have facilitated a diverse range of industries and their functionality by catalyzing the processes. In the area of home cleaning or domestic hospitality, the Industry 4.0 revolution has aided numerous benefits by the invention of artificial intelligence and robotics.

The introduction and utilization of the robotic and artificially intelligent functions in actions such as cleaning and care by use of robotic cleansers and vacuums have aided the time-consuming functioning such as manual use of cleaners and vacuums by the institution of the robotic vacuums and cleaner that operates on an automated basis, fostered by the technological aids, thus reducing the dependence on the human population for the basic activities and hence their separation from that of the necessary work outflows (Jermsittiparsert et al., 2020).

Henceforth, it can be said that the increased and diverse use of artificial intelligence and robotic applications in the present modern generation of domestic cleaning and hospitality have surely raised the easiness level for the human effort savings by replacement of human labor with that of the robotic assistances (Nicholls & Strengers, 2019).

However, an ongoing debate on the issue of human labor replacement by the use of robotic and artificial intelligent appliances has been on the rise for years. Usually, each action serves positive as well as negative facets of operations in any stream. The intake of robotic and technological revolutionary systems into the practice of the conventional and most fundamental practices like domestic hospitality has surely justified creating the ease of working and multidimensional access to the other operative areas by its use. In contrast to this, the global labor industry finds the use of such AI and robotic appliances to nullify the human labor market (Rajnai & Kocsis, 2017). Nevertheless, the target field of robotics seems to leverage the following new insights into human jobs and necessity by the origination of new areas of human work.

To illustrate, the utility of the technology-based artificially intelligent tools for the service provider requires the use of human labor and effort in the manual instructing the machines to function and operate accordingly, thus catering to a new aspect of human function. In the likewise manner, as stated by Wong (2019), around 9% of labor market demand will see a shift in the job demands by the end of 2030 such as there will remain a gap for the human practice in areas of training and development, project and application management, communication, and many such soft skill practices that are, in the present sense of technological abruptions, not coverable by the technological bodies. Such as the invention and utilization of computer technology since the late 1980’s also suffered a high disagreement in the view of labor elimination, despite seem to leverage the area of work by intake of new job scopes visible, in a similar factor, the Fourth IR finds ways to not nullify rather expand the new and emerging areas of human labor practice (Schwab, 2016).

Conclusion on The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The global workforce is standing on the verged technological revolutionary phase of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that has altered and shifted the global workforce practice by the institution of radical automated, artificially intelligent, and robotic assistant devices and machines in way of reducing the stress of the basic and assertive areas of labor work. However, with the continuity of these facets seems to neglect the space for human labor and jobs, the dynamic evolution of these practices and its continuous implication in various areas and sub-areas automatically has been evident in the generation of new jobs and space for labor work, thus keeping pace with the labor need and market as well.

References for The Fourth Industrial Revolution

iRobot. (2020). Corporate profile. Retrieved from: https://investor.irobot.com/corporate-profile#:~:text=About%20Us%3A%20For%20the%20past,leading%20global%20consumer%20robot%20company.

Jermsittiparsert, K., Somjai, S., & Chienwattanasook, K. (2020). The era of Industry 4.0 technologies and environmental performance of Thailand’s garment industry: Role of lean manufacturing and green supply chain management practices. Agile Business Leadership Methods for Industry 4.0, 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80043-380-920201016.

Lom, M., Pribyl, O., & Svitek, M. (2016). Industry 4.0 as a part of small cities. 2016 Smart Cities Symposium Prague (SCSP). https://doi.org/10.1109/scsp.2016.7501015.

Nicholls, L., & Strengers, Y. (2019). Robotic vacuum cleaners save energy? Raising cleanliness conventions and energy demand in Australian households with smart home technologies. Energy Research & Social Science, 50, 73-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.11.019.

Prassler E., Munich M.E., Pirjanian P., Kosuge K. (2016) Domestic Robotics. Springer Handbook of Robotics, 1729-1758. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32552-1_65.

Rajnai, Z., & Kocsis, I. (2017, September). Labor market risks of industry 4.0, digitization, robots, and AI. 2017 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Intelligent Systems and Informatics (SISY), 343-346. https://doi.org/10.1109/sisy.2017.8080580.

Schwab, K. (2016). The fourth industrial revolution: What it means, how to respond. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/. 

Weber, E. (2016). Industry 4.0: Job-producer or employment destroyer? Aktuelle Berichte 2/2016. Retrieved from: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/161710/1/aktueller_bericht_1602.pdf.

Wong, C. (2019). Industry 4.0 could create millions of new jobs. Economics. Retrieved from: https://www.futurithmic.com/2019/02/13/industry-4-0-could-create-millions-new-jobs/.

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