A multi-case study on Industry 4.0 for SME’s in Brandenburg, Germany

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is still in its development phase and it promises to bring remarkable benefits to the manufacturing industry around the world when employing the Smart Factory application in large organizations and their supply chains. However, there is a risk of a miss-match when trying to introduce Industry 4.0 to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) as the concept is mainly being developed around large manufacturing companies. The purpose of this research is to analyze the readiness level and feasibility of implementing Industry 4.0 technologies for SME’s in the federal state of Brandenburg (Germany). The work is based on the survey of 20 SME’s assessing their current problems emphasizing on automation, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), CAD/CAM, factory layout planning and logistics. Five SME’s from different domains out of the 20 surveyed are taken as case studies to evaluate the potential benefits, trade-offs and barriers from an implementation of these integrated technologies. The findings revealed that the companies are still coping with the issues relating to planning, logistics and automation. It was also found that all the concepts of i4.0 may not be necessary or even beneficial to an enterprise in the current scenario and new strategies need to be developed for its realization in SME’s.