Technological and organisational factors to succeed in Industry 4.0 transition implementation: an empirical study

The fourth industrial revolution and its disruptive ICT technologies for production systems are crucial for the growth of European companies, especially SMEs. Nevertheless, few have reached the digital transformation with its expected performance yet. This paper aims to identify the critical success factors that support the successful implementation of factory of the future practices. It relies on a qualitative survey addressed to 96 industrial companies that have already implemented Industry 4.0 technology and support organisations carried on in five Alpine Space countries. Eventually, five critical success factors were identified and ranked on a Likert scale. Twenty-six guidelines have been designed to support the industrys digital transition from these five critical success factors. The industry survey results contribute to accompanying industrial companies with improved diagnosis and monitoring tools. This empirical study allows for going beyond the current Industry 4.0 approaches and brings a new understanding of tools for factory of the future implementation.