Industry 4.0 and the Road to Sustainable Steelmaking in Europe

Introduction.- Social and Technological Transformation of the European Steel Industry.- European Steel Industry - A Trade Union Perspective.- Effects of Industry 4.0 on workforce and employment: a novel strategy to identify new skills requirements of the steel sector.- Steel Industry Automation and Incremental Change.- Robotic systems in the European Steel Industry: state-of-art and use cases.- Digitalisation - impacts on the workforce, challenges and current status of projects from the perspective of the cold rolling industry.- The impact of the new technologies on the workforce in the steel industry.- Combining technological and social innovation.- Attracting talents to the steel industry.- Development of Skills Adjustment and Training within a Social Innovation Process.- Recruitment and training: the 'effect' of digitalisation.- Preparing for a Digital Steel Industry.- Conclusion.

Dean Stroud is a Reader at Cardiff University School of Social Sciences teaching and researching on skills and workforce development, particularly in relation to the European steel industry, on which he has numerous publications. He has led and participated in numerous projects funded from a range of sources, mostly European, which have focused on skills needs, technological innovation, greening, equality and diversity, and, more generally, the 'human factors' of steel production. Currently, he is co-coordinator of the Erasmus+ European Steel Skills Agenda (ESSA) project and was a sector expert, with Antonius Schröder and Enrico Gibellieri, to the EASME-COSME funded Steel Sector Careers project.

 

Antonius Johannes Schröder is senior researcher and member of management board of Sozialforschungsstelle (sfs) (Social Research Centre, Faculty of Social Sciences at the TU University Dortmund), responsible for international research. He has worked in and managed several European projects, recently co-ordinating two EU Erasmus+ funded sectoral European Skills Alliances (ESSA and SPIRE-SAIS). He is Chairman of the Focus Group People within the European Steel Technology Platform ESTEP, the chair of the Task Force Non-technological and Social Innovation within Sustainable Process Industry through Resource and Energy Efficiency (SPIRE) and Chair of the senate of the German Professional Association of Social Scientists (BDS).

 

Luca Antonazzo is a sociologist researching work and organizations. He is currently an external scholar at the Centre for Workplace Research (CWER) - Prague University of Economics and Business. He is interested in studying how macro-trends such as digitalization and technological innovation, the green transition, and global market competition impact the labour markets, reshaping businesses and jobs, and bringing about new skills needs and new perspectives on human capital. He is also interested in social