Food Industry 4.0 readiness in Hungary

Abstract

In terms of production value, the food industry is the third-largest in Hungary, the first in Hungary in terms of the number of employees, and the first in Europe in the processing industry, as well as a significant user of resources. The research examined the state of art of digitalization readiness, focusing on I4.0 technologies, which supports the management to operate more efficiently the enterprise and to make better decisions. So the focus was on integrated enterprise information systems, management support systems, business intelligence systems, industry 4.0 technologies, and issues related to their application. The analysis based on an online questionnaire survey the request sent to 4.600 enterprises, the response rate was 5% which was representative of the branches of production, covered the Hungarian food and beverage manufacturing sectors in 2019. The companies were asked the most critical technologies in development, going towards Industry 4.0. The research tools were LimeSurvey, Mailing List Server, Excel, Power BI (Desktop, Publishing Server to distribute the results). The used analysing methods were making calculations, pivot tables, models, dasboards. We found that a significant portion of businesses, 78 %, use mobile devices in the manufacturing process. The three most relevant digital technologies are geolocating (GPS, GNSS), cloud computing, and sensor technology. The current level of digitalization and integration cannot be said to be high, but respondents are very optimistic about expectations. Improvements are expected in all areas in the next 2-3 years in terms of digitalisation and integration. Vertical integration involves, first and foremost, cooperation with partners in the supply chain. Horizontal integration means close, real-time connectivity and collaboration within the company. Unfortunately, between 6% and 15% of SMEs (approximately 9% on average) and large enterprises, 36% have a digital strategy. According to the survey, the sector needs significant improvement and creating a digitalization strategy.