Digitalization and Industry 4.0: An Analysis of Professional Skills and Behaviours

Purpose: Recent reports on Industry 4.0 reveal that a large part of Spanish companies have not yet made enough progress in the digitalization of processes and one of the most relevant challenges they face is training their employees to build a new culture that allows them to develop high-performance behaviors and take advantage of the potential of new technologies. This research seeks to identify the skills that could contribute to improving certain professional behaviors of employees who work mainly in the field of industrial engineering and that are considered necessary for the advancement of digitalization and Industry 4.0 processes. Design/methodology/approach: For this purpose, a Delphi study was carried out, collecting the opinions of 38 teaching and professional experts, through face-to-face meetings or by videoconference, and analysing their opinions using descriptive statistics and structural equation models. Findings: The results obtained show that the key skills for improving professional behaviours are teamwork, conduct, management, and problem -solving, which influence most of the behaviours analysed. Originality/value: In practice, these results allow companies to be guided in terms of employee training in relation to digitalization skills and assist their selection processes. Additionally, educational institutions can review their study plans, increasing the relevance of the skills that companies value the most.