Surround yourself with your betters: Recommendations for adopting Industry 4.0 technologies in SMEs

TY - JOUR

T1 - Surround yourself with your betters:

T2 - Recommendations for adopting Industry 4.0 technologies in SMEs

AU - Grooss, Oliver Fuglsang

AU - Presser, Mirko

AU - Tambo, Torben

PY - 2022/1

Y1 - 2022/1

N2 - The purpose of this paper is to review the state-of-the-art literature on Industry 4.0 and digitalisation in small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper aims to extrapolate and organise recommendations for how to progress in these disciplines from a substantial number of studies. This is accomplished by a systematic literature review on publications within the period 2018–2021. For this purpose, a rigorous metadata analytics process is deployed to retrieve, filter, and structure large amounts of metadata to increase inclusiveness and transparency. The findings consist of 11 focus areas that are developed by extrapolating recommendations from the reviewed literature. These focus areas are structured using the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, which is divided into subcategories. From these, three specific technology-focused recommendations are developed. Furthermore, the paper identifies some concerns with the current research methods due to the overall low implementation of Industry 4.0 in SMEs. This leads to suggesting that future research should engage in pragmatic research methods with attention to how digital technologies are applied in SMEs.

AB - The purpose of this paper is to review the state-of-the-art literature on Industry 4.0 and digitalisation in small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). The paper aims to extrapolate and organise recommendations for how to progress in these disciplines from a substantial number of studies. This is accomplished by a systematic literature review on publications within the period 2018–2021. For this purpose, a rigorous metadata analytics process is deployed to retrieve, filter, and structure large amounts of metadata to increase inclusiveness and transparency. The findings consist of 11 focus areas that are developed by extrapolating recommendations from the reviewed literature. These focus areas are structured using the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, which is divided into subcategories. From these, three specific technology-focused recommendations are developed. Furthermore, the paper identifies some concerns with the current research methods due to the overall low implementation of Industry 4.0 in SMEs. This leads to suggesting that future research should engage in pragmatic research methods with attention to how digital technologies are applied in SMEs.

KW - Digital Technology

KW - Digitalization

KW - Industry 4.0

KW - SME

KW - TOE

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146730116&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.digbus.2022.100046

DO - 10.1016/j.digbus.2022.100046

M3 - Journal article

SN - 2666-9544

VL - 2

JO - Digital Business

JF - Digital Business

IS - 2

M1 - 100046

ER -