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Advances in Information Technology (IT) have revolutionized the relationship between people and the business world through connectivity. This connectivity now advances to communication between things, endowed with processing capacity, through the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT also advances in the manufacturing industry, including machines, devices, sensors and the product in process, enabling autonomous communication between machines (M2M), products and systems. This communication of things through internet is not limited to the factory, but integrates the entire production chain through collaborative networks. It is in this context that the radical paradigm shift is devised for the concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). Facing this change, actors in the Manufacturing Automation Systems Supply Chain (CFSAM) also need to review their strategies and be aware of the new opportunities and threats that arise in this new scenario. The objective of this study is to understand, from the management point of view, the reaction of the manufacturing industries in Brazil to the paradigms of I4.0, and the potential impacts and opportunities that I4.0 brings to these actors. This work shows, through a Multiple Case Study, in eleven Brazilian companies, the reaction to this change in manufacturing automation and analyzes the potential impacts and opportunities for these actors. The study units were chosen purposefully and focused mainly on the group of technology and infrastructure providers for the implementation of the I4.0 platform. The result of this study revealed that there is a poor understanding of what is really the I4.0 among manufacturing companies in Brazil and that they are still little engaged in the practical implementation of the concepts of I4.0, adopting a strategy of technology followers. The contribution of this work includes the clarification of what really I4.0 is, distinguishing between basic concepts of I4.0 and its technological possibilities. It also includes the identification of the main reactions to the I4.0 paradigm and the analysis of opportunities for CFSAM actors based on them. The study concludes that although I4.0 does not commercially dispose of the standardization of the two basic technologies (service oriented architecture and semantics), which do not allow the full use of its potentialities across all ISA-95 layers, concepts already are being practiced partially and gradually, and are more advanced in the upper business layers.

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