Not for everyone? Product characteristics and digital production technologies in manufacturing. Contribution for a special issue of Revue d’Economie Industrielle, April 2020

Bernhard Dachs and Iztok Palčič

Revue d'économie industrielle, 2020, vol. n° 169, issue 1, 37-56

Abstract: Terms such as the ?Fourth Industrial Revolution?, ?Industry 4.0?, or the ?next production revolution? suggest a broad range of possible applications for digital production technologies including robots, advanced logistics systems or additive manufacturing. We argue that digital production technologies are less generic than current economic policy discussions often suggest. Their usage depends on the characteristics of firms? products, and their application is currently still confined to specific areas. The empirical analysis uses firm-level data from a sample of more than 2,000 manufacturing firms. The results confirm that the diffusion of robots, enterprise resource planning, additive manufacturing or advanced logistics is still highly specific to the characteristics of the production process. There are significant differences in the use of digital production technologies by firms according to the degree of product complexity, scale and the degree to which the production activities of the firm are customised or made to order. Thus, digital production technologies are still far from being general-purpose technologies. JEL classification: O33, L60.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; product characteristics; digital production technologies; diffusion; manufacturing; European Manufacturing Survey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L60 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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