The Effects of Industry 4.0 on Steel Workforce: Identifying the Current and Future Skills Requirements of the Steel Sector and Developing a Sectorial Database

In recent years, the European steel sector has undergone constant and substantial changes due to the digitalization of steel production as well as persistent demands to place the industry on a further environmentally sustainable footing. However, the majority of the experienced workforce in the metallurgy sector do not have the necessary technological competences. The steel sector is in need of a highly qualified labour force to keep up with the growing digitalization, and to manage the implementation of new business models. Creating a competent labour force with updated skills is only possible through addressing the current skills needs and trends as well as anticipating the future ones. This chapter is developed to respond to this need and guide the sector through performing a detailed desk analysis and generating a sectoral occupational database. We believe that the sectoral database would serve the steel industry as a crucial tool for all the future technological and organizational changes. Steel manufacturers, universities, training and education centres are aimed to be the end-users of the database, since they are responsible from the development, redesign and delivery of training programs.