Industry 4.0 Readiness Assessment: Comparison of Tools and Introduction of New Tool for SME

Abstract

This research aims to establish an assessment tool for assessing the readiness of small and medium enterprises (SME) in industry 4.0. The assessment of the current and future status is crucial for companies to decide on the right strategy and actions on the road to a digital company. First will be compared existing tools such as: IMPULS (VDMA), PwC and Uni-Warwick. On that basis, a tool for SME will be introduce. The tool has 12 categories: data sharing, data storage, data quality, data processing, product design and development, smart material planning, smart production, smart maintenance, smart logistic, IT security, machines readiness and communication between machines. Those categories are grouped into three: data, software and hardware. Each category has five levels of readiness (from 1 to 5), with particular criteria that refer to literature studies and expert’s opinion.

Keywords

• data exchange
• digitalization
• hardware
• Industry 4.0
• SMEs
• software