Le tecnologie di Industria 4.0 e le PMI/Technologies of Industry 4.0 and SMEs

Angelo Bonomi ()
Additional contact information
Angelo Bonomi: CNR-IRCRES, National Research Council, Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth, via Real Collegio 30, Moncalieri (TO) – Italy, http://www.ircres.cnr.it/index.php/en/

IRCrES Working Paper from CNR-IRCrES Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth - Moncalieri (TO) ITALY - former Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Torino (TO) ITALY

Abstract: This paper concerns a study on the next production revolution called Industry 4.0 based on confluence of various technologies, mainly digital, with far reaching consequences especially for productivity and employment. This study considers the implementation of Industry 4.0 in SMEs and industrial districts that represent a great part of Italian industry. The latter represents certainly a major challenge to such implementation because of the existence of various obstacles constituted by availability of investment capitals, small scale productions and tendency to develop and to adopt only incremental innovations rather than radical ones typical of Industry 4.0. In this work we study the technologies involved in Industry 4.0, taking account of existence of specific technologies, called enabling technologies, whose confluence in the manufacturing industry determines the implementation of Industry 4.0. Such enabling technologies originate from the major fields of R&D activities such as nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). In this paper we study the dynamic and possible evolution characterizing the formation of the various enabling technologies in a sort of ramification process, using specific models of technology, technology innovation and R&D, and their relation with manufacturing in SMEs and industrial districts. The results of the study underlines the importance of AI in determining possibilities and limits to Industry 4.0, the necessity to disrupt the tendency of SMEs in adopting only incremental innovations, the existence of “intranality effects” raising difficulties from the supply chain, and the importance of technology consulting firms in the integration of ICT in operating technologies of a manufacturing activity.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; SMEs; industrial districts; technology innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O14 O25 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2018-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-ent, nep-ict, nep-ino, nep-pay and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ircres.cnr.it/images/wp/WP_04_2018.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csc:ircrwp:201804

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IRCrES Working Paper from CNR-IRCrES Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth - Moncalieri (TO) ITALY - former Institute for Economic Research on Firms and Growth - Torino (TO) ITALY Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anna Perin () and Giancarlo Birello ().