Industry 4.0 and e-HRM

Industrial production is nowadays undergoing a deep and lasting challenge. The global competition and the ever-changing customer requests lead to reduced time-to-market, shorter product lifecycles, and the need to cut costs in order to stay competitive. In such an environment, Industry 4.0 offers new possibilities for companies to streamline their innovation processes, to cope with customers asking for more customization and flexibility, and to update their business model to a higher level of efficiency and service orientation (Hecklau, Galeitzke, Flachs, & Kohl, 2016; Rojko, 2017). The neologism originates from considering the ongoing transformation the fourth industrial revolution (Hecklau et al., 2016; Schneider, 2018). The industrial revolution historically started with the adoption of mechanized production plants driven by water and steam power, which represents the first stage of the process. The second industrialization wave came with electrification, that enabled mass production and brought about the division of labor. The digitalization of industrial manufacturing by means of programmable logic controllers opened the third phase, that was characterized by microelectronics and flexible production lines, which allowed to manufacture a variety of products. The smart automation of cyber-physical systems enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies triggered the current digitalization era. The self-organizing cyber physical production systems allow reaching flexible production in terms of product specifications, volumes, timing thus being able to meet the customer needs (Habracken & Bondarouk, 2017; Rojko, 2017).