How Do We Work Tomorrow?

Industrial work is changing, it is becoming more flexible and mobile. New forms of work organization arise when, for example, shift workers spontaneously coordinate themselves using a smartphone - as the Fraunhofer IAO project "Kapaflexcy" shows.

Companies are looking for new ways to qualify their employees and make optimal use of new technologies. "This is exactly where our innovation laboratory, the Future Work Lab, comes in," explains Prof. Wilhelm Bauer, Director of the Fraunhofer IAO. “Work is becoming faster, more dynamic and more flexible. This creates new forms of human-machine interaction. We want to show people this process in our innovation laboratory.”

Picture gallery

Picture gallery with 17 pictures

How is digital transformation changing our work?

The Future Work Lab is an innovation laboratory for work, people and technology and was created under the direction of Fraunhofer IAO on the Fraunhofer campus in Stuttgart. Above all, the laboratory should serve companies and their employees to test and understand the work of the future, new concepts and developments, and to train themselves. In May 2017, it will move to the neighboring Arena 2036 research campus. The Fraunhofer Institutes IAO, IPA, IAT and the IFF of the University of Stuttgart are pooling their expertise.

"The Future Work Lab sees itself as a source of ideas as to what future work in companies will look like," summarizes Fraunhofer IPA director Prof. Thomas Bauernhansl. "In our demonstrator world, manufacturing companies and employees can test how digital transformation can change work." Instead of doing theoretical research, the laboratory wants to carry out applied research together with companies.

Experience the future world of work live

The Future Work Lab consists of three areas. In the demonstration center, over 60 use cases show which technologies have arrived in reality. Exoskeletons for lifting activities, wireless workplaces, augmented reality glasses and apps for shift planning show new division of labor between people and technology. There are more demonstrators in our picture gallery.

Other skills will be required in the future world of work. Therefore, the competence development and consulting center with the learning world "Fit for the work of the future" offers seminars, workshops and training opportunities for employees. Here experts from the center develop individual training concepts together with business partners.

The third pillar is the academically oriented world of ideas for work research “Work in Progress”. The center offers a platform for scientific dialogue and further research around the industrial work of the future. Placement directly in the Future Work Lab should enable theory to be quickly put into practice.

digitalization

The effects of digitization on our working world

Content of the article:

• Page 1: How will we work tomorrow?
• Page 2: "Technical progress must mean social progress"

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