Operations and supply chain management 2

SMEs @ Industry 4.0: A comparison between top and average performers

Marco Bettiol, Mauro Capestro, Eleonora Di Maria, Stefano Micelli

In the recent years, industrial landscape is undergoing a deep technological transformation that concerns the full digitalization of business processes (Frank et al., 2019a). The peculiar feature of this fourth industrial revolution, known also as Industry 4.0, is the higher degree of complexity compared to the previous ones. Essentially, Industry 4.0 considers the usage of new technologies with the aim to integrate objects, humans and machines across (along the different business areas) and beyond (along value chain) the organizational boundaries to improve business processes and form new types of networked value chain. It encompasses the integration of different technologies into a knowledge-based production system to face the growing complexity of markets and competition (Kagermann, 2015). The Industry 4.0 paradigm embraces several enabling technologies. Focusing on the production, operation and services related to the manufacturing industries, scholars have outlined different technologies as follows: Big data and analytics, Cloud-computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Cybersecurity, Simulation, Systems integration, Additive manufacturing, Augmented reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Dalmarco et al., 2019; Lee et al., 2018).

 

#comparative multivariate analysis #competences #digital transformation #Industry 4.0 #SMEs #strategy; financial performance