Industry 4.0 strategies and technological developments. An exploratory research from Italian manufacturing companies

This paper aims to investigate the Industry 4.0 technologies adopted in Italy and whether they are leveraged to pursue specific manufacturing strategies. A survey was conducted among Italian manufacturing plants with the collection of 200 usable questionnaires. To provide context to the statistical results, respondents were also asked to discuss and provide suggestions about the difficulties and pitfalls encountered. The results show that while these technologies do not contribute to any significant improvement in environmental sustainability, other strategies such as Servitization, Design-to-cost, Supply chain integration and Machinery-electronic equipment-and database integration, as well as Lean strategy are enabled through the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. Our findings, accompanied with the suggestions made by the Italian respondents, provide a useful insight for both researchers and practitioners as to what kind of benefits can be achieved through Industry 4.0 solutions and the main areas of concern in their implementation.