EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Factors Introducing Industry 4.0 to SMES

Jaroslav Vrchota, Tomas Volek and Martina Novotná
Additional contact information
Jaroslav Vrchota: Department of Management, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 237005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Tomas Volek: Department of Economics, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 237005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Martina Novotná: Department of Economics, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, 237005 České Budějovice, Czech Republic

Social Sciences, 2019, vol. 8, issue 5, 1-10

Abstract: The aim of the paper is to identify some of the factors that affect the introduction of Industry 4.0 elements to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The article is concerned with factors that can be impulsive for SMEs and factors that, on the contrary, are limiting for SMEs to integrate Industry 4.0 into the enterprises. These factors are the result of a short brainstorming with some employees of 72 selected SMEs for case studies. The analysis of 1018 Czech SMEs showed that the introduction of Industry 4.0 is related to the size of the enterprise. Fisher’s Factorial Test based on a four-fold contingency table tested the data. The majority of medium-sized enterprises consider introducing digitization and robotization elements in the next 5 years, while in the case of micro-enterprises it was less than a half of the enterprises of the sample. At the same time, the relation between the enterprises with a written strategy and enterprises planning to implement Industry 4.0 was demonstrated.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; SMEs; factors; strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/5/130/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/8/5/130/ (text/html)

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:gam:jscscx:v:8:y:2019:i:5:p:130-:d:226069

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvaine Sun

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager (indexing@mdpi.com).

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:8:y:2019:i:5:p:130-:d:226069