Levels of openness to Industry 4.0 and performance. An empirical analysis of manufacturing companies

This work is part of a line of study into a company’s economic benefits and competitiveness by analysing the relationship between its performance and its level of openness towards Industry 4.0’s enabling technologies. The level of openness has been investigated using two indicators: breadth (number of enabling technologies used) and depth (number of environments for application in the Industry 4.0 supply chain). Performance has been measured by the economic benefits that the company obtains. This study comprises a practical analysis carried out in 2018 based on a sample representative of local businesses in the manufacturing sector in Piedmont (North Italy). The extended abstract is explained in five sections. The second section is a critical analysis of literature about Industry 4.0 and identifies research theories. The third section describes the data-base, the variables and the econometric model used. The fourth section goes into further detail about the main practical results. The fifth section outlines the discussion of the results. The work then rounds up with conclusions and options for future projects.