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A. Schumacher, C. Schumacher, W. Sihn:
"Industry 4.0 Operationalization based on an Integrated Framework of Industrial Digitalization and Automation";
in: "Proceedings of the International Symposium for Production Research 2019", issued by: M.N. Durakbasa, G. Gencyilmaz; Springer Nature Switzerland AG, 2020, ISBN: 978-3-030-31343-2, 301 - 306.

The utilization of Digitalization and Automation (DA) is currently one of the determining factors of increasing prosperity, productivity, and efficiency. Although widely promoted and incentivized by policy- and decision makers, industrial enterprises seem reluctant to actively push DA-development in their organizations. From a scientific point of view, we find missing operationalization resulting in a lack of analysis and understanding of basic DA-elements in real production environments as the main barrier towards Industry 4.0- and DA-implementation. Thus, in this paper we introduce a novel approach to transfer abstract Industry 4.0-concepts into industrial environments through the utilization of basic concepts of industrial digitalization and automation. Based on this framework we develop a model to assess the degree of digitalization and automation of value creation factors and organizational factors (DAVO). Knowledge about the company´s DAVO-degree enables their decision makers to derive operational Industry 4.0 target-states, define strategies thus decide targeted investments into organizational and technological developments. We applied the developed and operationalized measurement-metric and model in an empirical study in the Austrian industry assessing the DAVO-degree of 200 industrial companies. Besides insights into their maturity status, we find clear evidence in our study for the need of operationalized Industry 4.0-concepts. Furthermore, the DAVO-approach seems to encourage practitioners to reflect their organization´s DA-status with more accuracy thus enables them to derive more targeted and sustainable strategic steps.

Industry 4.0, digitalization, automation, value creation processes, empirical studies

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31343-2