Implementing industry 4.0 — A technological readiness perspective

Abstract

This paper identifies the relative importance of key enabling factors for implementing industry 4.0 from a technological readiness perspective. The research involves the identification of enabling factors, their categorization into technological readiness dimensions, followed by the determination of the relative importance of both technological readiness dimensions and key objective measures. The results show a strong relationship between technological readiness and design principles of Industry 4.0. The findings suggest that process-related objectives are more important than economic-related and environmental-related objectives when implementing industry 4.0. The results also show that “the knowledge of humans in technology and how to leverage it” and “improving the ability of machines and devices in connecting to the internet” are the most important factors for achieving all objective measures. Practitioners can use the apparent relationship between process related objectives and key technological dimensions for setting appropriate strategies and policies when moving towards Industry 4.0.