Mental Strain as Field of Action in the 4th Industrial Revolution

Industrial revolutions have changed the society by a development of key-technologies. The vision of the 4th industrial revolution is triggered by technological concepts and solutions to realize a combination of the economy of scale with the economy of scope. This aim is also known as mass customization and is characterized by handling a high level of complexity with a total network integration of products and production processes.These technology-driven changes also lead to new fields of activity in the industrial science and the occupational psychology. The 4th industrial revolution intends to implement the collaboration between humans and machines. At the same time, processes are locally controlled and planned. For humans, this results to new work items. Resulting psychological effects should be investigated.This paper classifies the 4th industrial revolution systematically and describes future changes for employees. It derives the necessity of labor- psychological analysis of new key technologies like cyber physical systems. A theoretical foundation of a psychological work requirement analysis by using the VERA method is given. Finally, results of a preliminary study are carried out that will give the base for further studies.