Examination of the criteria affecting Industry 4.0 with structural equation model and a pilot study

Abstract

Nowadays, technology and production environment is constantly developing. Companies have to follow innovations in order to survive in this competitive environment. The main purpose of Industry 4.0 or the fourth industrial revolution is to bring information technology and industry together. Industry 4.0 can be summarized as the storage of all data related to the machinery and equipment in production in a cloud system so that the production can be performed simultaneously by analyzing the data with the advanced automation level, which can communicate with each other and can exchange these data. Industry 4.0 enables increased flexibility in production and in productivity. In this study, the criteria affecting the Industry 4.0 level were determined and the structural equation model (SEM) was used to analyze the impact of the criterion effects on the Industry 4.0 level. 8 criteria were used in the model: technology, strategy, customers, leadership, government policy, culture, processes and employees. The most important three factors affecting the Industry 4.0 level are strategy with 1.00 factor load, culture with 0.97 factor load and processes with 0.90 factor load. It is aimed that the findings obtained in the study will help the companies to see their deficiencies and improvements in reaching the goal of Industry 4.0.