Awareness and readiness of Industry 4.0: The case of Turkish manufacturing industry

Abstract

The concept Industry 4.0 (I4.0) represents intelligent production processes combining cyber and physical systems through a set of technologies such as internet of things, big data and cloud computing. Transition to Industry 4.0 is expected to cause formidable structural changes, productivity increments and competitiveness in manufacturing industry in all over the world. This study aimed to investigate the general approach to the concept of Industry 4.0 and levels of adoption of the basic Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing firms across Turkey. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with 427 firms with various sizes (micro, small, medium and large) operating in six subsectors (automotive; electronic; machinery; chemical; food; and textile) of Turkish manufacturing. The paper examined nine I4.0 technologies: autonomous robots, big data applications, cloud computing, cyber security, simulation approaches, additive manufacturing, system integration, internet of things, and augmented reality. The results revealed that, there is a significant correlation between the degrees of importance and implementation of the basic Industry 4.0 technologies. Moreover, I4.0 implementation degree increases as the firm size increases. The top three industries in Turkish manufacturing that use the most basic Industry 4.0 technologies are automotive industry, electrical and electronics, and machinery, respectively. The analyses are aimed to achieve a better understanding of the concept Industry 4.0 by comparing different groups of manufacturers.