Il world of work is changing: the digital revolution is changing the factory. To understand what is happening and how companies are adapting to the globalization to be able to stay on the market it is interesting to see the strategy undertaken by a large group such as Electrolux, the Swedish multinational company based in Stockholm.
Electrolux is the second largest appliance manufacturer to the world and encloses big brands including: Aeg, Kelvinator, Phico, White-Westinghouse. In Italy has six factories and completed a series of acquisitions: Castor, Molteni, Rex, Zanussi, Zoppas.
Invoice approx 13 billion and for this very reason, it represents a force that allows it to stay in at the forefront of innovation of production processes.
In its establishment of Pordenone (formerly Zanussi), the Swedish multinational is implementing a plan of inputs-outputs. The factory is being modernized, entering the robotics and creating new product models with increasingly complex software.
I old tasks of the workers – like the assembly of the pieces – they are slowly disappearing. The company's idea was not to fire them, but to give a super bonus of 100 thousand euros gross for those who do not want to convert to robotics. They went to sign in already thirty in a week, the average age is 55 years and they are predominantly women.
The incentive added to the severance pay – tfr – will eventually allow you to start a new activity: an employee has decided to open a comic book and graphic novel shop in vicolo delle Mura, in the center of Pordenone.
Aside from the bonus, it is simultaneously in progress the hiring of 70 engineers ('white coats'). The workers ('blue overalls') are vanishing, in fact those who retire or leave their jobs it is no longer replaced. In ten years the workers have passed by 1.600 to 800 but in the meantime, they entered the factory beyond 200 engineers following a investment of 50 million in the robotization of the lines.
After Pordenone, the multinational will include everyone the other establishments Italians (a total of 3.500 employees) to involve them in this 'Digital Awareness' (Digital Awareness) through 1.400 training hours. "Through this program all line operators will be able to learn to communicate and relate to the new technologies with which they will interface, both inside and outside the workplace, becoming true protagonists of this evolution", he explained to Italia Oggi Ruber Campagner, manager of the group.
A space called within Electrolux has also been created 'Innovation Factory' in which company, university and laboratoryi of various kinds will collaborate to find innovative solutions. At the same time however, even if the initiative was approved by sindacati, are still concerned:
“In the face of so much innovation, it is necessary to address the problem of the employment dimension but also of the significant lack of digital literacy. – He declared to Italia Oggi Augustine Breda (Cgil) – A great cultural leap would be needed, a mass digital literacy, not only to identify the risks but also to exploit the potential of the innovation that is advancing.”
