Tracking the maturity of industry 4.0: the perspective of a real scenario

Abstract

To track industry 4.0 status, readiness models are used to analyze the state of industry 4.0 technologies’ implementation, allowing the quantification and qualification of its readiness level considering different dimensions. Not all companies are adopting these new technologies with the same ease and with the same pace. There are companies unable to blend the industry 4.0 with their business models, leading to a lack of a correct self-assessment on understanding the reached readiness level. Into this purpose, it is important to understand how companies are facing the digital transformation challenges, what is their perception about the enabling technologies towards the industry 4.0, assess the industry 4.0’ readiness so far, and what are their perception of the barriers to the adoption of these technologies. This paper aims to assess the industry 4.0’ readiness level of companies and discuss the perception of companies about the barriers on the adoption of industry 4.0 with the reached readiness level of companies. New barriers are also brought for discussion on academic community. To this end, empirical data was collected on a sample of 15 companies belonging to an important industrial cluster located in Portugal.

Quality 4.0 Maturity Assessment in Light of the Current Situation in the Czech Republic

“…The authors did not intend to conduct a deep and systematic literature investigation in this area. Therefore, we only refer to articles which are very focused on such research [6,40,[51][52][53].…”

A Review on Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) Readiness Among Industry Players

“…There are various IR4.0 readiness models in existence today. For one, readiness model on Hungary industrial area was conducted by Nick et al [25] are based on 99 questions which were divided into three sources of questions; 16% from NTP Workgroups which introduced aspects of education, training, employment, and access to financial resources, Training related Demand skills, benefit, barrier [12,15,17,26] Self-assessment related Reason, method, benefit [27,28] Funding related Reason, method, benefit [19,29,30] 18% from VDMA framework comprises of company level, and 66% from the author's interviews on the industrial people. Readiness model built by Lucato et al [29] is based on a basis structure by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J4000, and the author assumed the model to be like a linear parameter.…”

“…Readiness model built by Lucato et al [29] is based on a basis structure by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J4000, and the author assumed the model to be like a linear parameter. Alcácer et al [27] applied IMPULS maturity assessment model and six dimensions were chosen as their research model of IR4.0 digital transformation. Table 3 summarizes the IR4.0 readiness assessment models studied by previous researchers.…”

“…Alcácer et al [27] in their online self-assessment concluded the survey answers that both small and large companies with a lower readiness level, considered that one of the most important barriers is lack of support from top management. This satisfies that size of company does not affect the IR4.0 readiness but indeed the reaction and action of management department that pave the way.…”

“…Assessment tools are developed by academia and practitioners aiming the selfassessment within analytical frameworks to evaluate conditions or analyze IR4.0 adoption on an interactive form with the framework developers [38]. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) or Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination (SPICE) are examples of maturity models, used in software development field [27].…”