Investigation of Industry 4.0 Implementation Challenges: An Exploratory Case Study of Volkswagen

Lidia Reyes, Chi-Kuang Chen, Dennis A. Sosa Diaz and Jens J. Dahlgaard

Chapter 3 in Key Challenges and Opportunities for Quality, Sustainability and Innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution:Quality and Service Management in the Fourth Industrial Revolution — Sustainability and Value Co-creation, 2021, pp 47-72 from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

Abstract: Industry 4.0 (I4.0), commonly known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, was officially launched in Germany as a “strategic initiative” to introduce a new era of Internet-driven businesses and society. Since its launch, it has garnered considerable attention; however, it faces numerous challenges and problems during implementation (Kagermann et al., 2013; Rüßmann et al., 2015; Foidl & Felderer, 2015). Therefore, we intend to empirically investigate the challenges that companies face when attempting to implement I4.0. To achieve this purpose, a case study, Volkswagen AG (VW), is investigated. A two-dimensional analytic framework, “ integration engineering feature” and “implementation scope/level”, is developed to examine the 10 challenges that VW faces in its implementation process. The case study data are collected from academic and journal databases. The results reveal that the priority challenge that VW is currently facing is customer/user experience and business management. However, to address these challenges, we suggest that VW focus on the vertical and horizontal integration at the intra- and inter-organisational scope/level. The implications of the findings from this study are presented in the paper.

Keywords: Quality and Service Management; Total Quality Management; 4th Industrial Revolution; Industry 4.0; Sustainability; Value Co-Creation; Innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L2 L6 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789811230356_0003 (application/pdf)
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789811230356_0003 (text/html)
Ebook Access is available upon purchase.

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:wsi:wschap:9789811230356_0003

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in World Scientific Book Chapters from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().