Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Assessing Industry 4.0 Readiness of Enterprise
Assessing Industry 4.0 Readiness of Enterprise
Slovakia
Doctoral School on Safety and Security Sciences, Óbuda University, Budapest, Hungary
rajnai.zoltan@bgk.uni-obuda.hu, kocsis.istvan@phd.uni-obuda.hu
Abstract – Industry 4.0, the digital transformation of result in new processes, and change the rules of the
the industry, is enabled, and forced by the rapid game.
technology development. The fast changing II. INDUSTRY 4.0
environment presents huge challenges for enterprises,
and economies. The digital transformation of manufacturing
Management of the enterprises must have a clear view
processes based on intelligent machines and devices
of their companies’ preparedness for this fourth is new. Definitions or efforts for concluding a
industrial revolution for making the appropriate definition of Industry 4.0 usually provide us with a
decisions to preserve or improve their competitiveness. high-level conceptual overview of the idea or
Industry 4.0 readiness assessments, and maturity phenomenon. Comprised from the definition of the
models can support the management at benchmarking, German Industry 4.0 Platform Steering Committee
and setting up a roadmap for the digital from 2015, most important attributes of Industry 4.0
transformation of their company. are as follows [1]:
Assessing and predicting in the continuously, and Digitalization, and Industry 4.0 are widely
rapidly changing environment is impossible. The considered as an important current trend, according
phenomena facilitated by new enabling technologies to several survey, leaders of many enterprises have
not heard about it [2]. A large share of companies Being already aware of the trend of digitalization, in
being aware of the concept at least, know also that order for starting the process of a digital
they need to adopt changes into company processes transformation of the company, the management
[3], but don’t know how to start with introducing must have a clear view of the current status, and a
industry 4.0, or how to get “industry 4.0-compliant”. strategic plan of what should be achieved: “Good
metrics aren’t just about raising money from VCs…
It is important to realize that digital transformation they’re about running the business in a way where
of a company is not technology investment only. It founders can know how – and why – certain things
must be an overall business strategy based on the are working (or not)….” – Jeff Jordan, Partner at
commitment of the management of the company. Andreessen Horowitz.
Then, based on the new business strategy, internal
and external business processes change. Going As the information demand increases, and more
digital is not a transient change, rather an evolution complex readiness assessment models evolve
through multiple steps involving technology and including more numeric readiness indicators, it is a
organizational changes. general approach to bundle these indicators into
thematic groups, usually called dimensions. The
IV. ASSESSING INDUSTRY 4.0 READINESS values of the indicators are used to calculate so-
called digital readiness indexes. These complex
Industry 4.0 readiness assessments at company level models can be used for assessing the digital
are based on self-assessment. Information is readiness level of companies, hence the digital
collected mostly via internet surveys, sometimes via maturity model expression have been spread.
phone interviews. Early surveys, as seen above,
target usually general information on awareness, Depending on their main goals, various maturity
perceptions, attitudes, etc. Some of them investigate models have been developed. While some of them
more detailed information on enterprises, use descriptive elements, other convert information
manufacturing (decision making, smart obtained from surveys directly to numeric scores.
manufacturing technologies, data security, e.g.), and
branch specific data [4]. A similar approach can be Although the PwC Industry 4.0 survey of 2016
observed at international, [5] for the DACH1 region, focuses mostly on the global outreach, and large
and at global level providing for more descriptive sample base, the PwC maturity model of Industry 4.0
information on phenomena [6]. capabilities is introduced [7]. It is based on seven
dimensions of digital capabilities embracing
business, products and services, integration of value
chain, data analytics, agile IT
architecture, compliance and
security, organization and
culture. Four maturity levels
are defined in each of the
dimensions: digital novice,
vertical integrator, horizontal
collaborator, digital
champion. The model is used
for setting a qualitative
assessment of the enterprise
to devise an action plan.
Levels of digitalization:
1. Computerization: using
standalone applications.
2. Connectivity: systems are
connected into a
Figure 1. The four dimensions of the Forrester digital maturity model [9]
1
DACH Region: of Germany, Austria, Switzerland
000226
SAMI 2018 • IEEE 16th World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics • February 7-10 • Košice, Herl’any, Slovakia
Figure 2. The four levels of the Forrester digital maturity assessment model [9] following the company on its
development in digitalization: skeptics, adopters, collaborators, differentiators.
Figure 3. The inner, and the outer circles show the structure of the Industry 4.0 readiness
modell of the Impus Foundation [1] composed of six dimensions, and of 18 associated
fields, which group their respective indicators.
000227
Z. Rajnai, I.Kocsis • Assessing Industry 4.0 Readiness of Enterprises
• Culture: company culture, vision, strategy, The current Forrester model is a result of an
leadership, education and training of evolution of several years. This presents an example
employees, innovation, that evaluation models should also change according
• Organization: customer orientation, to the changing technology, business, and customer
governance and execution of digital environment.
strategy, HR, organizational model,
processes, The industry 4.0 readiness model of the Impuls
• Technology: technology roadmap, Foundation of VDMA (Association for mechanical
development, investment driven by engineering, plant engineering, and information
customer and business value, flexibility, technology) is built upon six dimensions: Strategy
• Insight: clear and quantifiable measurement and organization; Smart factory; Smart operations;
of digital success, using feed-back from the Smart products; Data-driven services; Employees.
customer. These dimensions are decomposed into 18 fields,
Each of the dimensions of the assessment are which groups their respective indicators (see
comprised of a set of questions. The answers are figure 3.).
provided as scores of these evaluation criteria Based on the indicator values, a six-level Industry
resulting in a final score or index. This vale can be 4.0 readiness model of the companies has been
used for example for elaborated: 0: Outsider, 1: Beginner, 2: Intermediate,
• assessing digital readiness of the enterprise 3: Experienced, 4: Expert, 5: Top performer (see
on a numeric scale, figure 4.).
• benchmarking with respect to the statistics Readiness level evaluation of each company follows
of a larger sample, these rules: in each of the six dimensions, the
• reveal strengths and weaknesses of the company is ranked to the lowest readiness level of
enterprise at specific fields of company the fields within that dimension. Then, the final
functions in terms of digitalization. readiness score is calculated as a weighted average
of the readiness scores of the six dimensions. The
The final scores of the assessment can be used, and weight factors were determined by asking the
is getting a common approach in these kind of companies in the survey to score the importance of
models, to set up segments of companies sorting each of the dimensions. The resulting weight factors
them into categories of maturity levels. were: strategy and organization 25%; smart factory
Segmentation can be done by setting up ad-hoc 14%; smart products 19%; data-driven services 14%;
numeric ranges or based on characteristics of an smart operations 10%; employees 18%.
already present enterprise measurement base. The Finally, to summarize, and to conclude results easier,
Forrester model sets up four maturity levels based on these five readiness levels can be grouped into
segmentation of their company base (see Figure 2): company types: Newcomers, Learners, and Leaders.
skeptics, adopters, collaborators, differentiators. The
Figure 4. The six company maturity levels of the Impuls Industry 4.0 readiness assessment model [1]: 0:
Outsider, 1: Beginner, 2: Intermediate, 3: Experienced, 4: Expert, 5: Top performer. These readiness levels are
grouped finally into company types: Newcomers, Learners, and Leaders.
000228
SAMI 2018 • IEEE 16th World Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics • February 7-10 • Košice, Herl’any, Slovakia
2
The author took part in the elaboration of the
survey questionnaire, and that of the strategy.
000229
Z. Rajnai, I.Kocsis • Assessing Industry 4.0 Readiness of Enterprises
[7] PWC: Industry 4.0: Building the digital [9] Gill, M., VanBoskirk, S.: The Digital
enterprise. 2016 Global Industry 4.0 Survey. Maturity Model 4.0 (Forrester Inc. 2016.)
(PWC. 2016.) [10] The online questionnaire of the Hungarian
[8] Schuh, G. et al.: Industry 4.0 Maturity Index Industry 4.0 National technology Platform
(acatech, National Academy of Science and (Industry 4.0 NTP. 2017.
Engineering. 2017.) https://survey.sztaki.hu/index.php/178863?la
ng=hu . Last accessed: 10.08.2017)
000230