Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how much the Italian manufacturing companies are ready to be concretely involved in the so-called “Industry 4.0” (I4.0) journey. In particular, this paper focuses on analyzing the knowledge and adoption levels of specific I4.0 enabling technologies, also considering how organizations are involved and which are the main benefits and obstacles. Design/methodology/approach A descriptive survey has been carried out on a total of 103 respondents related to manufacturing companies of different sizes. Data collected were analyzed in order to answer five specific research questions. Findings The findings from the survey demonstrate that Italian manufacturing companies are in different positions in their journey toward the I4.0 paradigm, mainly depending on their size and informatization level. Furthermore, not all the business functions are adequately involved in this transformation and their awareness about this new paradigm seems quite low because of the absence of specific managerial roles to guide this revolution. Finally, there are strong differences concerning both benefits and obstacles related to the adoption of I4.0 paradigm, depending on the technology adoption level. Research limitations/implications Future research should focus on developing case studies about pilot I4.0 practitioners in order to understand the root cause of successful cases. Both managerial and practical references should be developed, helping Italian manufacturing enterprises to consolidate and strengthen their position in global competitive market. Finally, it would be interesting to carry out the same study in other countries in order to make comparisons and suitable benchmark analyses. Originality/value Despite scholars have debated about the adoption of technologies and the benefits related to the I4.0 paradigm, to the best of authors’ knowledge, only a few empirical surveys have been carried out until now on the adoption level of I4.0 principles in the manufacturing sector of a specific country.

This paper illustrates the results of an empirical study involving 21 engineer-to-order (ETO) companies, operating in the machinery-building industry. The study investigates the needs and requirements of such companies in terms of software support for governing the businesses, with particular emphasis on production planning and control (PPC) processes. An empirical analysis investigated two main aspects: (i) the set of business activities performed by the companies in the analysed industry and (ii) the relevant, high-level software functionalities required for the execution of such activities. As an answer to the observed compelling need for reviewing the general approaches to PPC in machinery-building companies, we develop an empirical, high-level production planning and scheduling reference framework, encompassing all the activities involved in the order fulfilment process.

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Additive Manufacturing (AM) refers to a set of production methods which comprises not only the technologies and their corresponding manufacturing processes, it also includes the supportive underlying platforms and infrastructures such as automation and \CAD\ interfaces whose proper implementation would sometimes necessitate drastic changes to take place in order to fully exploit the advantages resulting from this set of methods. The fast growth rate of \AM\ among researchers and industrialists who are active in different fields, is a proof that it has the potentials to be an effective methodology for manufacturing components and final products. This underscores the need to look into its features more closely, and provide the capacity for further improvement and implementation. This paper presents a systematic analysis of the existing literature to illustrate how AM’s industrial applications could create distinctions from those of conventional/traditional technologies, and then based on the analysis, demonstrate the need to make reconfigurations within production, distribution, and logistics processes. Although the common strategy for including a new technological system is usually to implement it through slow integration within existing technologies, the main effort in this study has been dedicated to analyse the \AM\ system in isolation, so that the activities which are already present and active within companies’ manufacturing processes can be spotted for optimization and improvements. At the end, a set of proposals are recommended in order to reconfigure the production system as well as the supply chain to enable \AM\ as a reliable and functional system