An Empirical Analysis Of The Barriers Of Transition From The Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies Pilot Phase To Widespread Adoption

Nowadays business processes in industrial companies are undergoing significant changes under the influence of the trends of the fourth industrial revolution, and the pace and scale of the spread of digital technologies has significantly accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic. The technological basis for the digital transformation of industrial companies is the industrial Internet of things, cloud computing and blockchain, the collection of big data and their subsequent analytics, machine learning technologies, digital twins, human-machine interaction, including virtual and augmented reality, robotics and automation.Even though the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution can transform the activities of enterprises and increase their efficiency, today most of the projects do not move from the pilot stage to widespread implementation in the company. The purpose of this study is to identify and assess the main barriers that impede the successful implementation of digital technology implementation projects.At the first stage of the study based on a review of domestic and foreign literature, as well as in-depth interviews with experts, groups of barriers were identified and verified that impede the implementation of digital technologies in industrial companies: economic and financial, managerial, competence, regulatory and technological barriers. Also, questionnaires were developed for the quantitative stage of the study.At the second stage of the study, a quantitative assessment of the strength of the influence of barriers was carried out. The barriers with the greatest influence are lack of funds, the need to attract large amounts of funding, and insufficient support from the organization’s management. According to the analysis, the least significant barriers for companies include the complexity of introducing new technologies and the need to change the company’s business model.At the end of the work, a list of proposals was developed to overcome the barriers to the transition from the stage of pilot implementation of technologies of the fourth industrial revolution to widespread implementation.