A critical review of smart manufacturing & Industry 4.0 maturity models: Implications for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

SMME Readiness for Smart Manufacturing (4IR) Adoption: A Systematic Review

“…The findings suggest that the manufacturing 4IR discourse has primarily been through the lens of Industry 4.0 concept applied in a non-contextual approach to country specific problems and strategic initiatives [16,40]. However, due to definitional differences of these terms (smart manufacturing/industry 4.0/smart factory) [5], there is a research gap and a related opportunity to contextualize 4IR concepts such as smart manufacturing to country specific problems and strategic initiatives. Table 2.…”

“…Smart Manufacturing is an emerging 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) phenomena as a result of the convergence of various Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that improve manufacturing factors such as productivity, quality, delivery and flexibility [1][2][3][4]. Smart manufacturing relates to enabling industries and their manufacturing ecosystems to connect and adopt novel efficiency gains along their value and supply chains [5]. Smart Manufacturing as a new technological innovation is also seen as a key driver of improved manufacturing operations [6,7] and a catalyst of manufacturing intelligence [8].…”

“…There have been other systematic reviews [5,[13][14][15][16][17][18] to understand the factors inhibiting smart manufacturing adoption and implementation by SMMEs. Those reviews focused on different dimensions [5,[13][14][15][16] and contextual perspectives [17,18]. For example, Mittal et al [5,13,14] focused specifically on maturity models, while Hamdi [16] and Moeuf et al [15] focused on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and organisational dimensions respectively.…”

“…Those reviews focused on different dimensions [5,[13][14][15][16] and contextual perspectives [17,18]. For example, Mittal et al [5,13,14] focused specifically on maturity models, while Hamdi [16] and Moeuf et al [15] focused on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and organisational dimensions respectively. Nowotarski and Paslawski [17], and Sommer et al [18] focused on Germany and the construction sector.…”

“…The systematic review specifically focuses on the context of the research (lowincome or high-income country), the awareness (adequate knowledge), benefits (relative advantage), the technological innovations and readiness/adoption as important dimensions of interest. Based on the objective this review differentiates itself from previous similar reviews [5,[13][14][15][16][17][18].…”