Impact Of Covid-19 On Manufacturing – Case Study Of Croatia

The covid-19 pandemic has caused a major effect on the manufacturing industry all over the world. At the same time, the concept of digital manufacturing called Industry 4.0 (I40) marks its tenth year of presence and availability on the market. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of current findings on the impact of the pandemic on the digitization of the manufacturing industry and compare the world results with the research conducted in Croatian manufacturing companies. For the worldwide state-of-art contributions, the review of papers published in Web of Science database is conducted, while for the impact on Croatian companies, authors have conducted a research in 53 local companies, as online questionnaire. The results have statistically been analysed and most significant results have shown that, unlike the rest of the world, most of the Croatian manufacturing companies yet aren't familiar with digital manufacturing concept, while the pandemic had a mild influence on their businesses. In the world, the pandemic has caused the change in perception of the need for I40 and enhanced digitization. Half of the Croatian participants haven’t yet heard of the new digital manufacturing concept strategy and don’t consider implementing it soon. The pandemic hasn’t changed their perception, while most of the digital technologies implemented were only the ones that enable remote working while only a few implemented advanced I40 elements such as digital twin. The pandemic has caused mild disruptions in the supply chain, but most of the manufacturing companies managed to fulfil the business goals set at the beginning of 2020. Practical and social implication was to built framework for the future strategic development of Croatian manufacturing companies, while also this is the beginning point for the future research expansion to other countries of Balkan region, but also to service-oriented industry.