The relevance of Industry 4.0 and its relationship with moving manufacturing out, back and staying at home

Jan Stentoft and Christopher Rajkumar

International Journal of Production Research, 2020, vol. 58, issue 10, 2953-2973

Abstract: In view of the fact that Industry 4.0 is becoming increasingly essential, the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies is believed to be an essential strategic component in further increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes and in determining decisions concerning globalisation strategies. Thus, this paper provides an empirical analysis of the essential constructs of Industry 4.0, and drivers and barriers for Industry 4.0. The paper is based on 270 valid answers to a questionnaire-survey distributed among Danish manufacturers. Regression analyses were used to test the proposed hypotheses. The results of the analyses reveal that the identified drivers and barriers for Industry 4.0 have a positive impact on the perceived relevance of Industry 4.0 among companies. Furthermore, the analyses show that the perceived relevance of Industry 4.0 among companies has a positive impact on companies that have moved manufacturing back and on companies that have moved manufacturing out and back. Conversely, the perceived relevance of Industry 4.0 among companies has a negative impact on companies that have remained domestic. The perceived relevance of Industry 4.0 has no impact on companies that have moved manufacturing out. This research, in general, offers to both researchers and practitioners an increased consciousness concerning the relevant drivers and barriers for Industry 4.0 in decision processes about where to locate manufacturing.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00207543.2019.1660823 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:tprsxx:v:58:y:2020:i:10:p:2953-2973

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/TPRS20

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2019.1660823

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Research is currently edited by Professor A. Dolgui

More articles in International Journal of Production Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().