Model to evaluate the Industry 4.0 readiness degree in Industrial Companies

The goal of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) consists to achieve a high level of operational effectiveness and productivity, as well as a higher level of automation. If on one hand the fourth revolution represents an opportunity for many companies, since the implementation of the smart machines should allow the increasing of the productivity, on the other hand many industries are questioning on the possible implementation of new technologies in their business. Indeed, in most cases can be difficult to evaluate how the I4.0 technologies could impact on the industries' competitiveness, as well as it can be very complicated to identify the best strategy to be adopted for implementing the I4.0 technologies to specific business cases. Therefore, given the importance of this new industrial (r)evolution and considering the hard prediction of the impact due to adoption of I4.0 technologies in a company, the aim of this paper consists to propose a model to measure the readiness of industries with regard to the implementation of I4.0 paradigms. To develop the proposed model, this work used as basis a structure similar to the one used by Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J4000 – Measurement of the implementation of lean manufacturing in an organization – duly modified to encompass the I4.0 principles and concepts. The results shown the effectiveness of the model to support managers for identifying the strategical actions that can be adopted with the scope of improving the company's readiness level in order to seek the maximum benefits from the adoption of I4.0 paradigms.