Evaluating the I4.0 transformation readiness of agri-food companies: From factories to ‘smart’ factories

The fourth industrial revolution, commonly known as Industry 4.0 (I4.0), is the last technological revolution in manufacturing industry. The economic development due to first three revolution was based on mass industrial production, strongly product-driven. I4.0 changes drastically this approach; the new focus is based on “demand-driven” market that requires the fully-integrated systems able to adapt, in real time, the production system to the demand change. Therefore, a new concept of factory is introduced by I4.0, it is based on open and interconnected infrastructure that allows to manage, to optimize and to monitor the whole production process; according to the National Institute for Standard Technologies (NIST), this can be defined a “Smart Factory”. If on one hand the smart factory ensures a flexible and adaptive manufacturing, on the other hand many risk are related to the complexity and interdependence of processes involved (e.g. uncertainty of investments, machines reliability, length of the chain of liability, etc.). Therefore, a preliminary evaluation on the risks and the opportunities related to the competitiveness degree that can be achieved, is needed. This paper addresses these issues by proposing a model for identify the "readiness degree" of agri-food companies to the implementation of smart technologies. Consistently whit this purpose, the model evaluates the potential competitiveness degree of the company by adopting smart technologies, under economic, social and sustainable perspectives.