Training as a facilitator for Industry 4.0

Purpose - This paper studies the impact of certain characteristics of companies to training programs in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) context. Partial objective is to rank the main human barriers companies have to overcome so that they can digitalize. Design/methodology/approach - To accomplish the objectives, a closed-ended questionnaire was sent to Slovak and Italian companies and analyzed using statistical nonparametric tests. The partial objective was achieved using the so-called Henry-Garrett’s ranking method. Findings - Results show the significance impact of companies’ characteristics such as foreign participation and company dimension on training practices whereas economic situation (financial health) seems not to influence it. Research limitations/implications - The study may lack generalizability as only 102 answers were collected. Perhaps, the outcome would be different with another sample from other countries. Moreover, using closed-ended questions, certain features may not have been covered. Practical implications - Companies should always guarantee training for the resulted benefits. It is fundamental for organizations to find a time gap, resources and professionals who can teach these programs. Even when companies are incurring financial problems they should do so since human capital development can increase their competitiveness. The most critical barriers should be carefully addressed by companies. Training can help to overcome I4.0 barriers related to Human Resources (HR) and contribute to its growth. Originality/value - This paper gives insights of the impact of certain characteristics of companies to the training programs. Because past research has limited their analysis on the identification of barrier, its novelty lies in the attempt to rank the most significant barriers among those detected by other authors in previous research.