Industry 4.0 Technology Re-Engineering Impacts on Strategy Agility and SME Competitiveness in Malaysia

Abstract

Competitiveness is the key factor for manufacturing SMEs to increase the Malaysia economy. Competency of manufacturers to react with the changes driven industry 4.0 is now becomes imperative for the manufacturers to sustain Competitiveness. Hence, the main objective for this study is to assess the competitiveness levels, as well as to examine the relationship between industry 4.0 and Competitiveness, the function of industry 4.0 as mediating role. Specifically, the study integrates internal factor which are individual factors that consist of entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness), organizational factor that consist of intellectual capital (structural capital) and external factor which is institutional factors, whereas SMEs competitiveness is treated as the dependent variable. The theories used to link all the mediating and independent variable is Resource-Based View (RBV) and Institutional theory. The study is quantitative based via survey questionnaire and responded by 162 SMEs manufacturers and analyses were carried out using SPSS and Smart-PLS software. This paper is one of the initial attempts to draw the attention towards the important role of management practices in industry 4.0, as most of the recent studies are discussing the technological aspect. This paper also suggests empirical and quantitative investigation on these management approaches in the context of industry 4.0. Through the finding, manufacturing SMEs are clearly aware and understand the engaging industry 4.0 to sustain the important of competitiveness in their business performance.

Enhancing Supply Chain Agility with Industry 4.0 Enablers to Mitigate Ripple Effects Based on Integrated QFD-MCDM: An Empirical Study of New Energy Materials Manufacturers

“…Rane et al (2019) studied redesigning businesses in the context of Industry 4.0 to help organizations improve operational agility to implement blockchain-based IoT integrated architectures [41]. Lavinsaa et al (2020) studied the impact of Malaysian Industry 4.0 technology restructuring on strategic agility and enterprise competitiveness [42]. Eslami et al (2021) assessed the relationship between supply chain integration, SCA, and financial performance from the perspective of dynamic capabilities [43].…”

“…Industry 4.0 is emerging as one of the modern supply chain and manufacturing practices but is unfortunately prone to many organizational, legal, strategic, and technological challenges that can be addressed by improving SCA, as both provide sufficient sustainability for the entire organization [33]. In recent years, there have been more studies in academia and business circles to improve the agility of supply chain through Industry 4.0 [40][41][42][43].…”

Assessment of Factors Influencing Agility in Start-Ups Industry 4.0

“…Chakravarty et al [24] comprehend how information technology areas of expertise form organizational agility and firm achievement. Lavinsaa et al [16] evaluate competitive market levels and investigate the connection between Industry 4.0 and competitive edge, with Industry 4.0 as a mediating role. Through the integration of the views of the resource-based view and social exchange theory, Rahman et al's [25] goal is to investigate the relevance of Logistics 4.0 in the context of Industry 4.0.…”

“…Many researchers have discussed agility in the context of Industry 4.0 [9,[13][14][15][16]. Previous literature has not addressed the estimation of variables influencing agility in start-up operations 4.0.…”