Indústria 4.0 no Brasil: a dinâmica das transformações nas esferas produtiva e laboral

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution is changing production parameters around the world. The digitalization of the productive plants, through the intensive use of information technologies, has allowed to reach new levels of efficiency and flexibility. Thus, the present research effort aims to understand and present the characteristics, potential and challenges of Industry 4.0, in order to analyze its possible implications for the organization of production and work. This paper also presents an analysis of the Brazilian situation, pointing out possible obstacles and potentialities for the insertion of the country in this new technological context. It is an exploratory research that aims to provide greater familiarity with the phenomenon of Industry 4.0, understand its dynamics and constitute hypotheses. From this, we sought to analyze this phenomenon using the theoretical and methodological bases of several thinkers in the area of economic sciences. At the end of the paper, it was concluded that because it is a dynamic process, the impacts of the digitalization of the economy can occur in several spheres: In production, there is a trend of greater flexibility in production plants, increased efficiency, reduction in costs and waste and possibility of incorporating the individual preferences of each customer into the merchandise. In the labor sphere, the impacts can be adverse, and can directly contribute to the process of raising unemployment and expanding the flexibility of work already underway around the world, leading to an increase in precarious relations and working conditions. It is hoped that this work can contribute to disseminate the knowledge about this phenomenon in the academic as well as the business environment.