Industry 4.0 and working life: A field study on an automotive company and its stakeholders

Changes and technological advances in social, economic and political life have progressed by influencing each other throughout the historical process. Working life has also been directly affected by these change and transformation processes. The processes that progressed very slowly in the pre-industrial revolution period continued with the greatest acceleration ever experienced in the first industrial revolution, which is accepted to have started with the invention of the steam engine. The first industrial revolution, in which the whole understanding and way of working changed, naturally brought along many social, economic and political transformations. The next high-tech transformation started with the use of electricity in production, and there were great social transformations that also affected the working life closely. In this period, which is called the second industrial revolution, as a result of the intense use of existing advanced technologies, technology has begun to come to mind as the first method used to recover from events or to recover after such events such as crisis and war in the world. The third industrial revolution emerged as a result of just such a crisis, while looking for ways to get out of the oil crisis in the early 1970s. The revolution that started the era of automation and information and communication technologies has also been an indication that the duration of technological revolutions is shortening. With the transformations in all areas of working life and the intensified use of automation and information technologies in working life the way to the fourth industrial revolution has been opened. In the process of transition from the third industrial revolution, in which automation and information technologies are concentrated in working life, to the fourth industrial revolution, researches show that new technological developments will cause radical transformations in every field. In this context, Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, consist of today's advanced Technologies such as the internet of things, three-dimensional printers, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, augmented reality, virtual reality, smart factories and industrial robots. Within the scope of this study, the possible effects of advanced technologies on working life in the new industrial revolution period were examined through qualitative interviews with the stakeholder of an automotive company.