‘Industrie 4.0’ and an Aging Workforce – A Discussion from a Psychological and a Managerial Perspective Matthias Schinner 1 , Andr´ e Calero Valdez 2(B ) , Elisabeth Noll 1 , Anne Kathrin Schaar 2 , Peter Letmathe 1 , and Martina Ziefle 2 1 Chair of Management Accounting, RWTH Aachen University, Templergraben 64, Aachen, Germany {schinner,noll,letmathe}@controlling.rwth-aachen.de 2 Human-Computer Interaction Center, RWTH Aachen University, Campus-Boulevard 57, Aachen, Germany {calero-valdez,schaar,ziefle}@comm.rwth-aachen.de Abstract. The aging workforce is already impacting on companies, particularly those in countries of the industrialized Western world. Fur- thermore, Western companies are coming under the increasing influ- ence of technological developments, such as ‘Industrie 4.0’, which are in the process of completely changing traditional working environments. In order to maintain their industrial competitiveness, companies need to synchronize these technological developments with their own organiza- tional requirements and in particular with the requirements of an aging workforce. We show how different types of competencies may be cate- gorized in order to enable a successful synchronization. In addition, we take a look at recent developments in the domain of ‘Industrie 4.0’ and derive future research areas for solving the challenges involved. Keywords: Complexity · Industrie 4.0 · Competence management · Collaboration · Communication · Internet of Things 1 ‘Industrie 4.0’, Internet of Things, and an Aging Workforce: Their Pitfalls for Employees and Employers The aging of the world’s population is having an impact on all areas of daily life. As a result, the United Nations describe this demographic change as “one of the most significant social transformations of the twenty-first century” [1]. To underline this development in numbers: By 2050 every fifth person of the world’s population will be aged 60 years or older. In 2015 only every eighth person belonged to this age group [1]. Especially companies in high-wage countries are affected by the effects of an aging workforce [2, 3]. The main trends which are driving this development are the expansion of life expectancy as well as a decline in birth rates, the latter resulting from better education and birth control [4]. The number of young employees entering the c  Springer International Publishing AG 2017 J. Zhou and G. Salvendy (Eds.): ITAP 2017, Part II, LNCS 10298, pp. 537–556, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58536-9 43