Purpose

Investing in Industry 4.0 is an important consideration for manufacturing firms who strive to remain competitive in this global economy, but the uncertainty and complexity of where to focus technology investments is a problem facing many manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a region of manufacturing firms in the Midwest USA to investigate the role of firm size, access to funds and industry type on decision to invest in and deploy various Industry 4.0 technologies.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was developed, piloted, and deployed to manufacturing companies located in the Midwest USA, specifically, Indiana, USA. A total of 138 manufacturing firms completed the full survey. The survey participants were requested to rank order the various technology categories with respect to previous historical spending, workforce capabilities and anticipated return on investment. The survey was supplemented with publically available data. Due to the use of rank-order data to identify Industry 4.0 priorities, a non-parametric analysis was completed using the Kruskall Wallis test.

Findings

The findings suggest that manufacturers with less than 20 employees and/or less access to funds (sales less than $10m) prioritize digital factory floor technologies (e.g. technology directly impacting productivity, quality and safety of manufacturing processes). Larger manufacturers with 20 or more employees and/or access to more funds (sales greater than or equal to $10m) prioritize enterprise support operations technologies.

Originality/value

Research studies and reports tend to lump manufacturing’s perspective of Industry 4.0 into one homogenous group, and rarely acknowledge the limited participation of “smaller” Small and medium-sized enterprises, which account for the far majority of manufacturing firms in the USA. The value of this study is on the “novelty of approach,” in that the data collection and analysis focuses on heterogeneity of manufacturing firms with respect to size, access to funds and industry type. The findings and recommendations are beneficial and relevant to organizations supporting Industry 4.0 efforts through workforce development and economic development initiatives.

中文翻译：

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制造业公司的特征如何影响工业4.0技术投资的决策

目的

对于努力在全球经济中保持竞争力的制造业公司而言，投资工业4.0是一个重要的考虑因素，但是，技术投资重点的不确定性和复杂性是许多制造商面临的问题。本文旨在重点介绍美国中西部地区的一家制造公司，以研究公司规模，获得资金的渠道以及行业类型在决定投资和部署各种工业4.0技术方面的作用。

设计/方法/方法

一项调查已开发，试行并部署到位于美国中西部（特别是美国印第安纳州）的制造公司。总共138个制造公司完成了整个调查。要求调查参与者根据以前的历史支出，劳动力能力和预期的投资回报率对各种技术类别进行排序。该调查补充了公开可用的数据。由于使用排名数据来确定工业4.0的优先级，因此使用Kruskall Wallis检验完成了非参数分析。

发现

调查结果表明，员工少于20人和/或资金使用较少（销售额低于1000万美元）的制造商优先考虑数字工厂车间技术（例如，直接影响生产过程的生产率，质量和安全性的技术）。拥有20名或更多员工和/或拥有更多资金（销售额大于或等于1000万美元）的较大制造商优先考虑企业支持运营技术。

创意/价值

研究和报告倾向于将制造业对工业4.0的观点归纳为一个同质的群体，并且很少承认“小型”中小型企业的参与有限，这些中小型企业在美国占绝大多数的制造公司。这项研究的价值在于“方法的新颖性”，因为数据收集和分析的重点是制造企业在规模，资金可及性和行业类型方面的异质性。调查结果和建议对通过员工队伍发展和经济发展计划支持工业4.0努力的组织是有益的和相关的。