Industry 4.0 Implementation Challenges and Opportunities: A Managerial Perspective

Industry 4.0 is a concept aimed at achieving the integration of physical parts of the manufacturing process (i.e., complex machinery, various devices, and sensors) and cyber parts (i.e., advanced software) via networks and driven by Industry 4.0 technology categories used for prediction, control, maintenance, and integration of manufacturing processes. Industry 4.0, which is expected to have a great impact on manufacturing systems in the future, is attracting attention in both industry and academia. Although academic research on Industry 4.0 is growing exponentially, evidence of Industry 4.0 implementation in practice is still scarce. Moreover, the challenges industry faces when implementing the Industry 4.0 concept seem to be even less addressed. At the start of the present survey, a preliminary literature review identified a lack of comprehensive analysis of the Industry 4.0 implementation challenges. Thus, the purpose of the present article is to provide an overview of the reported Industry 4.0 implementation challenges in the relevant literature by conducting a systematic literature review. Specifically, while the present study differentiates between managerial and technological Industry 4.0 implementation challenges, the focus of the present article is on the managerial Industry 4.0 implementation challenges. This overview is performed by deriving an inductively coded Industry 4.0 technology framework that classifies Industry 4.0 technologies into ten categories: cyber physical systems, Internet of Things, big data analytics, cloud computing, fog and edge computing, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, cyber security, semantic web technologies, and additive manufacturing. The present article identifies, codes, and defines the managerial Industry 4.0 implementation challenges and derives opportunities for overcoming them.