The Energy Worker Profiler from Technologies to Skills to Realize Energy Efficiency in Manufacturing

In recent years, the manufacturing sector has been responsible for nearly 55 percent of total energy consumption, inducing a major impact on the global ecosystem. Although stricter regulations, restrictions on heavy manufacturing and technological advances are increasing its sustainability, zero-emission and fuel-efficient manufacturing is still considered a utopian target. In parallel,companies that have invested in digital innovation now need to align their internal competencies to maximize their return on investment. Moreover, a primary feature of Industry 4.0 is the digitization of production processes, which offers the opportunity to optimize energy consumption. However, given the speed with which innovation manifests itself, tools capable of measuring the impact that technology is having on digital and green professions and skills are still being designed. In light of the above, in this article we present the Worker Profiler, a software designed to map the skills currently possessed by workers, identifying misalignment with those they should ideally possess to meet the renewed demands that digital innovation and environmental preservation impose. The creation of the Worker Profiler consists of two steps: first, the authors inferred the key technologies and skills for the area of interest, isolating those with markedly increasing patent trends and identifying green and digital enabling skills and occupations. Thus, the software was designed and implemented at the user-interface level. The output of the self-assessment is the definition of the missing digital and green skills and the job roles closest to the starting one in terms of current skills; both the results enable the definition of a customized retraining strategy. The tool has shown evidence of being user-friendly, effective in identifying skills gaps and easily adaptable to other contexts.