Adapting to supply chain 4.0: an explorative study of multinational companies

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to examine how multinational companies from five industries can adapt to what we call Supply Chain 4.0; the supply chain created as a result of the new digital era brought forth by the fourth industrial revolution. The focus is limited to three key emerging trends this development is seeing; Big Data, cloud computing and 3D printing. This study is carried out through a literature review and empirical findings from a series of interviews, and an explorative survey. The literature review identified a substantial difference in compatibility between industry level and the digital transformation Supply Chain 4.0 implies. Empirical findings showed that among the investigated trends, 3D printing was considered to have a major impact on Supply Chain 4.0. Its use though has been limited due to uncertainty among the supply chain stakeholders about its true added value in a cost/benefit perspective. Moreover, multinationals showed a strong preference for Big Data implementations, but only had limited focus on cloud computing applications. This paper presents a graphical framework meant to give practitioners a better description and understanding of the issues that have been debated concerning Supply Chain 4.0, their adaptability and their strengths and challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry 4.0
• supply chain 4.0
• emerging trends
• impacts
• multinational companies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Please see Hermann, Pentek, and Otto (2015) for how they define these terms.

2. The interviews’ transcripts, as well as the interview guide can be provided upon request to the authors for confidentiality reasons.

3. The full survey, can be provided upon request to the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dimitrios Makris

Dimitrios Makris works as a trade execution specialist at ED&F MAN Netherlands. He focuses on global logistics and supply chain management optimization. He has previously worked as a supply chain planner for Monsanto focusing on planning optimization at the region of Spain and Portugal. He has graduated from the department of Engineering management at the Technical University of Denmark and holds a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Western Macedonia, Greece.

Zaza Nadja Lee Hansen

Zaza Nadja Lee Hansen works as a team leader in the Danish Fisheries Agency with a focus on logistics and supplier management. She has previously worked for the Danish Ministry for Science and the Danish National Archives. She has furthermore worked for Deloitte and as an independent consultant for supply chain and logistics issues.

She has also worked in academia as an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Denmark where she supervised several student projects as well as taught different operations management courses. She has published several book chapters, conference papers and journal articles.

Omera Khan

Omera Khan is a part-time consultant and public speaker on key supply chain issues. She is also a part-time Professor at Royal Holloway University of London and University of Agder (UiA). She has held visiting positions at MIT (USA), MBS (UK), SP Jain (Dubai & Singapore). During her career she has supervised several Masters, MBA and PhD theses to successful completion.

Omera has gained international recognition for her research in supply chain risk management. She has led and conducted research projects, in supply chain resilience, responsiveness, sustainability, cyber risk and security and the impact of product design on the supply chain. In addition, Omera works with leading organisations on a range of supply chain and logistics issues and is advisor to many Universities developing courses in logistics, supply chain and operations management.