demographic change

Is demographic change a nightmare being completely at mercy as a business owner? Or is it rather offering opportunities? Demographic changes are only one factor for a successful business development. Along with other challenges to the company’s development, it can be used as an opportunity: Planning and taking measures in the medium and long term on individual, collective and organizational levels will result in a change of leadership.

In the context of risk management the demographic change is reflected in demand and environmental risks. On the one hand, the requirements of products’ target groups are changing. On the other hand, the labour bottleneck is increasing due to the shift in population and age structure. When choosing strategies and measures for dealing with the demographic change in supply chains, companies should consider organizational as well as technological and personnel management-related aspects. In this connection, the integral examination of the complete product line as well as the company’s and the supply chain partners’ development of capabilities are essential.

For most German companies managing demographic change is one of the main future challenges. However, many firms are not yet well prepared to face this development. Nowadays competition is primarily based on knowledge and hence enabling knowledge transfer between older and younger employees has turned to be a key success factor. In this paper we therefore develop a ‘Knowledge Transfer Balanced Scorecard’ in order to provide a hands-on tool for controlling the knowledge transfer process in times of demographic change.

The aging workforce and labour shortage due to lacking young qualified employees are topics which today primarily concern small and medium-sized businesses in unattractive regions. The Federal Statistical Office expects particularly dramatic changes in the age structure of the German workforce in 2017 to 2024. How can companies prepare for these changes? And is it a mere obligatory task or could there have been unexploited potential overlooked so far? Recent German studies provide new insights.

In view of the demographic changes, questions arise about the long-term development of the performance of work systems with an aging workforce. These questions are especially urgent if work systems with predominantly mental demands should be operated for many years. The simulation tool ESPE-AS can help to forecast the development of the performance of a work system with the given workforce for future periods. This paper describes a first approach of this simulation-based planning method and illustrates it using the routine activities for creating operations plans.

The percentage of employees beyond 50 years of age will grow tremendously over the next 25 years. Fewer younger workers will be available and companies will face the challenge to retain older workers. Companies will be required to introduce an age-differentiated human resource management that deals with the challenges of an older workforce. Based on the results of a survey of companies primarily from the industrial sector, the paper analyses the current situation and develops recommendations for necessary changes in the design of HR instruments of companies.

In turbulent and innovative markets it is important for any production enterprise to have a high level of robustness within a specific range of output quantities vis-à-vis any changes it will be affected by. In fact, it is necessary to provide a planning routine for the adaptability of production systems as early as during the planning stage. In this way it will be able to respond to unforeseeable developments. Due to the demographic development in particular, it is no longer appropriate to consider the staff structure after the configuration of the machinery equipment has been planned. It is much more important to design manufacturing systems to be productive during the whole usage phase of the production system without a change of the permanent staff. The aim is to enhance the planning task in such a way that the production system can be adapted technically and organisationally as well as in a personnel-oriented manner to a changing performance of an ageing workforce.

The demographic change will be one of the big challenges for operational logistics in the upcoming years. With the aging of logistics workers, physical constraints increase especially when employment is characterized by high physical stress (e.g. like in production and logistics). That causes higher demands on the design of logistics workplaces. But how can companies react to this, taking into account that value added orientation leads to new demands to workers? Is there a chance that the increasing percentage of elder employees can properly fulfil the demands in the future? Whereas the ergonomic design of workplaces is the precondition, an intelligent labour organisation with diversified stress can preserve the worker’s ability to work.