1.1 INTRODUCTION
At the Hanover Fair in 2011, the German government announced the concept of “Industrie 4.0” as part of its high-tech strategy. The concept, now mostly known as “Industry 4.0,” originally aimed to secure the future competitiveness of the German manufacturing industry. It relates to a fourth Industrial Revolution, based on cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT). CPS aim to resemble and extend the physical world in a virtual one using and generating data. This data generated is shared using the IoT, interconnecting humans, production facilities, and products across the entire value chain. Thus, Industry 4.0 enables horizontal and vertical integration, i.e., across entire industrial value chains, across the entire lifecycle of products, and across several functional departments (Dalenogare et al., 2018; Kagermann et al., 2013; Lasi et al., 2014).
While many technological solutions have been found, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) still lag behind in several regards, relating to their smaller size, resource base, bargaining power, missing economies of scale, and often acting as suppliers without end customer contact (Horváth & Szabó, 2019; Moeuf et al., 2020; Müller et al., 2018). Hence, SMEs cannot grasp the potentials of Industry 4.0 as large enterprises do and face some distinct barriers against Industry 4.0 (Masood & Sonntag, 2020; Sahi et al., 2020; Stentoft et al., 2020). However, for Industry 4.0 to unfold successfully, SMEs also need to be integrated within supply chains. Hence, also for large enterprises and entire supply chains, the implementation of Industry 4.0 in SMEs is vital (Birkel & Müller, 2021; Müller et al., 2020, Veile et al., 2020). Therefore, this book, in addition to strengthening understanding of SMEs’ implementation of Industry 4.0 around the world, aims to regard SMEs as part of entire supply chains that span the globe, that is, as part of industrial ecosystems. In this regard, SMEs despite their small size, need to be integrated into supply chains and ecosystems to achieve horizontal and vertical integration as a central pillar of Industry 4.0 (Benitez et al., 2021; Hahn, 2020; Schmidt et al., 2020).
1.2 CONTENT OF THIS BOOK
This book includes experiences of Industry 4.0 implementation among SMEs located in 14 countries around the world. Contributions from nine European countries, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Serbia, and the UK, provide insights from their lessons learned from Industry 4.0 implementation. Those insights are complemented by five further countries from around the world: Brazil, China, India, Iran, and the US. Each chapter briefly describes the context and the digitalization policy adopted in the country first, and highlights the barriers, drivers, and opportunities that companies identified in relation to Industry 4.0.
Following these 14 perspectives on Industry 4.0 implementation, a further chapter explains why SMEs must be integrated better into supply chains. This chapter provides a meta-analysis of several studies with SMEs, as well as their customers and larger supply chain counterparts. Hence, this chapter attempts to extend the SME perspective on Industry 4.0 implementation.
Finally, the last chapter concludes the book, summarizing commonalities and differences among factors influencing Industry 4.0 in SMEs nationally. This chapter further aggregates Industry 4.0 opportunities, illustrating further collaborative possibilities for SMEs.
We want to thank all authors for their valuable contributions to this book, as well as the publisher, who made this publication possible. The interesting insights on the topic of Industry 4.0 and SMEs shall be of benefit for all readers from academia and practice.
Julian M. Müller and Nikolai Kazantsev
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