La consolidación de las prácticas de alto rendimiento de gestión de personas, una tarea prioritaria para el éxito de los sistemas de producción cíber-físicos en las medianas empresas españolas

Resumen

Experts agree that cyber-physical production systems (CPPS), commonly known as lndustry 4.0 (14.0), have the potential to transform the business landscape through significant improvements in productivity. Those improvements come not only from process efficiency but, specially, from new business models. lmportant for this transformation potential is the fact that those improvements will be on top of the existing, significant, productivity differences between companies, which can make the gap between the leaders and followers potentially unbridgeable. This thesis shows that, in order to successfully cope with this digital disruption, medium-sized firms have to undertake, as a priority, the consolidation of high-performance people management practices. lt also brings evidence that, in the context of CPPS, time is a competitive variable more relevant than ever. Due to the special importance of accumulated learning in digitalization, there are not only very important advantages of being first but, companies that may consider 14.0 as a choice and not an imperative and, in consequence, may postpone its development, risk being left behind. Likewise, and to emphasize this sense of urgency, this thesis shows that the complexity associated with the implementation of 14.0 is high and that the process of doing so can properly be described as a "cultural transformation". Consequently, being a cultural transformation, a fact that inevitably requires time, and knowing that the process of consolidation of high-performance practices also requires time, it becomes an ever more important competitive variable. The urgency for medium-sized companies to start this journey cannot be over emphasized. From the perspective of the level of consolidation of those practices, Spanish medium-sized companies have, in general, a significant deficit, when compared to those of a good part of the OECD countries, usually their most direct competitors. In addition, they also have lower levels of digitization, making the challenge even bigger. This does not mean that there are not medium-sized companies with those high-performance practices consolidated or high levels of digitization but, in general, the average is low and dispersion high. The most relevant challenge of 14.0 does not come from the technological elements intrinsic to this digital disruption, but from the need to innovate in business processes. lt is not intended here to state that technology does not play an important role in lndustry 4.0, it does, but that technological complexity should not hide the fact that it is only a tool, a means toan end. This thesis is structured as follows: a) First, it is shown that there is an agreement in the fact that the expected impact of CPPS on productivity is not only very important, but transformative, disruptive. b) Second, by digging into what happened in other technological innovations that have had a transformative impact in the past, such as the alternate current motor and the information and communication technologies, it is shown that in both cases, there is agreement that their impact on productivity has materialized through innovation in processes and business models. c) Third, evidence is presented that for CPPS, the impact may be even bigger, because digitization seems to create a growing gap over time between winners and followers, generating a kind of virtuous cycle. d) Fourth, it is shown that there is consensus behind the cause of the wide dispersion of productivity and innovation levels: the dispersion in the level of implementation of high-performance people management practices. e) Fifth, evidence is presented that Spanish medium-sized firms are lagging behind in the level of implementation of high-performance people management practices as well as in digitization, when compared with those of the OECD countries. f) Finally, the proposals to be validated, the selected methodology, the results and conclusions are presented.