The road towards industry 4.0: a comparative study of the state-of-the-art in the Italian manufacturing industry

Abstract

PurposeThis paper has two objectives: first, to investigate the state-of-the-art of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) adoption in Italian manufacturing firms and, second, to understand variations in technologies implemented and business functions involved, benefits perceived, and obstacles encountered in I4.0 implementation over a three-year period.Design/methodology/approachThe approach adopted in this research is descriptive, nesting longitudinal features. The paper presents a descriptive survey of 102 Italian manufacturing companies. The authors also evaluated non-response biases. The longitudinal approach was achieved by comparing the responses of the 40 sub-samples in common with a second similar survey launched three years prior, which aimed to identify patterns of evolution in the adoption of the I4.0 paradigm.FindingsSurvey findings demonstrate that Italian manufacturing companies still have limited awareness of I4.0 technologies, and the adoption of I4.0 technologies differs per technology. Company size and information system coverage level are the two factors that impact the company's technology adoption level. The comparative study shows that knowledge and adoption increase in a three-year interval with an unbalanced involvement of business functions regarding the I4.0 transformation. Indeed, companies are still seeking I4.0 solutions to reduce costs and lead times primarily, and the benefits perceived by companies are shown to be related to the number of I4.0 technologies in use. Finally, when companies put the I4.0 technologies into practice, competence is constantly considered the most significant barrier.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper aims at conducting a thorough investigation into the development of I4.0 adoption in manufacturing companies. The main limitation of this study concerns the limited number of subjects involved in the longitudinal study (40) and the focus on a limited geographical area (Italy). In addition, more I4.0 technologies could also be incorporated into the survey protocol to gain further insight into I4.0 development.Originality/valueThe authors provide one of the first attempts to assess the variations of I4.0 implementation concerning technology adoption, business function involvement, and the alteration of benefits and obstacles. Several studies presented in the literature highlight the lack of longitudinal studies investigating the development of the I4.0 paradigm in a specific manufacturing context: this paper is the attempt at filling this gap.

Implementation of digital technologies for a circular economy and sustainability management in the manufacturing sector

“…This finding is in line with results from previous studies conducted in different contexts, such as a survey of 405 supply chain professionals by (Sodhi et al, 2022), or a survey of 200 Italian companies by De Marchi and Di Maria (2020). Also in line with our findings, Zheng et al (2021) show that manufacturing companies are the best informed concerning industrial IoT and that they are least familiar with AI. The findings of our study also resemble a general European tendency found in the DESI 2022 (European Commission, 2022a) According to the DESI 2022, 48 % of large enterprises and 28 of small enterprises use any IoT, 14 % of enterprises in general conduct big data analysis, and 8 % use AI technology.…”

“…Our study also found that large companies are significantly more likely to adopt DTs than small companies in general, and, tendentially also in a sustainability management context. This confirms and expands on EU-wide findings from the DESI 2022 (European Commission, 2022a), as well as findings from authors such as (Zheng et al, 2021), who found that the company size (measured by turnover) has an impact on the company degree of technology implementation.…”

“…The dominance of IoT implementation among the companies surveyed is probably explained by several factors. First, IoT technologies have acquired a higher level of maturity compared to other DTs (Zheng et al, 2021). Second, IoT is mainly seen as means for automated and continuous data collection and sharing (Ingemarsdotter et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2022).…”

Agriculture 4.0: A systematic literature review on the paradigm, technologies and benefits

“…Similar to other sectors of the economy, agriculture is also moving towards digitalisation (Dufva & Dufva, 2019). This concept's relation to that of the Industry 4.0 paradigm (i.e., the adoption of digital technologies to support the processes of manufacturing companies) is evident (Zheng et al, 2020(Zheng et al, , 2021. The phenomenon has been investigated according to different scientific research fields, where some are directly related to activities concerning land cultivation (water control, crop growing, harvesting, etc.…”

When to choose ranked area integrals versus integrated gradient for explainable artificial intelligence – a comparison of algorithms

“…, 2021; Deeks, 2019). Therefore, the term explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is becoming most relevant to various industries in the era of Industry 4.0, wherein operations are being transformed using AI (Zheng et al. , 2021; Arrieta et al.…”