Drivers and barriers for Industry 4.0 readiness and practice: empirical evidence from small and medium-sized manufacturers

Abstract

The technological development e.g. in terms of Industry 4.0 is moving rapidly enabling manufacturing companies with new possibilities for digital transformations to offer products and services to current and new markets at competitive costs. A mixed-method approach is used to investigate the drivers and barriers for Industry 4.0 readiness and practice among Danish small and medium-sized manufacturers. Data is based on a questionnaire-survey among 190 manufacturers about their readiness for digitalized manufacturing and their actual practice in this area. A main finding is that it is the managers’ lack of perceiving Industry 4.0 drivers, not their perceptions of high Industry 4.0 barriers that obstruct SMEs’ development of Industry 4.0 readiness and their application of Industry 4.0 technologies. Using these insights provide four more nuanced interpretations of the significance of the Industry 4.0 challenges faced by the four case companies. The finding that SMEs seem to engage positively with Industry 4.0 barriers, when there is perceived a business case to do so, has important consequences for our understanding of the inertial dynamics surrounding SMEs’ Industry 4.0 application, and consequently for guiding policy initiatives to promote Industry 4.0 adaptation among SMEs.

Keywords:

• Industry 4.0
• drivers
• barriers
• readiness
• mixed method

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank IT-Vest – Networking Universities in Denmark for funding the research activities disseminated in this paper. The funding is provided to further develop the master course in IT and business development in small and medium-sized enterprises offered at the part time education of Master in IT.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan Stentoft

Jan Stentoft, PhD, is a professor of Supply Chain Management at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at University of Southern Denmark. His research and teaching interest are within lean management, supply chain management, supply chain innovation, sales & operations planning, and the movement of production to various locations from a global perspective and with emphasis of using advanced technologies. He has practical industry experience from positions at LEGO, Gumlink and current management consulting activities.

Kent Adsbøll Wickstrøm

Kent Adsbøll Wickstrøm, PhD, is an associate professor of Organization and Knowledge Management at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at University of Southern Denmark, and at Sino Danish Center for Education and Research, Beijing, China. His research and teaching interests are within entrepreneurship and small business management and includes a focus on the effects of institutions, social networks, and new technologies on business start-up, strategy, innovation, and exporting. Practical Industry experiences includes project manager, project coordinator, and management consulting.

Kristian Philipsen

Kristian Philipsen, PhD, is an associate professor of Business-to-Business Marketing and Innovation at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at University of Southern Denmark. His research interest is within business-to-business marketing, innovation within and between firms, entrepreneurship & SME strategy, and teaching entrepreneurship and innovation. He teaches strategy, innovation management and innovation and entrepreneurship. He has practical industry experience from a position as financial/accounting manager in a municipality.

Anders Haug

Anders Haug, PhD, is an associate professor of Information and Knowledge Management at the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at the University of Southern Denmark. He holds a PhD in knowledge representation and automation of engineering knowledge from the Technical University of Denmark. He has produced more than 100 journal and conference articles in the areas of data quality, knowledge-based configuration, enterprise systems, IT in SMEs, business ethics and design management. He has practical industry experience with business process improvement, software design and product development.