Industry 4.0 in a Small Commodity-Based Economy: A Vehicle for Stimulating Innovation

Abstract

Innovation is fundamental for companies to exploit changes in their environment and maintain a competitive advantage. Access to information and the ability to quickly utilise available resources are key enablers for in-company innovation. Both of these are elements associated with Industry 4.0, which can now be identified as a facilitator of innovation. The Industry 4.0 framework integrates evolutionary advances in manufacturing, production technologies, information technology, Internet of Things (IoT), distributed processing power, and visualization tools, which facilitate organizations to more effectively create enhanced value propositions for their customers, encouraging innovation in processes and products. Three local firms are analyzed, and opportunities for innovation are clearly identified in the process of transitioning to Industry 4.0 through reconfigured value chains; the creation of a cluster to facilitate the development of innovative cloud-based solutions; and product configurator and an augmented reality interactive display.

Analysis of Caribbean XR Survey Creates an XR Development Strategy as a Path to the Regional Metaverse Evolution

“…7). This reinforces the need for adopting an I4.0 strategy which can satisfy the innovation requirements [47]. Fig.…”

Industry 5.0: A survey on enabling technologies and potential applications

“…with the machines, the intelligence of the humans is also used in Industry 5.0 when making decisions. Hence, the personal human touch is added along with the pillars of Industry 4.0 like efficiency and automation [162,163]. The human-robot co-working ability of Industry 5.0 utilizes the intelligence and decision making of humans, supported by key-enabling technologies, helps in achieving mass personalization like never before across several sectors.…”

Caribbean Metaverse Development: A Literature Review Perspective

“…Furthermore, these tools achieve the various I4.0 benefits by implementing various virtual applications in the business, process and customer segments. As such, AR, VR or MR technologies satisfy the "I4.0 key concepts of evolution, connected systems, decentralised, intelligent and integration of value chains" and are recognised as enablers of I4.0 as they can facilitate its core benefits of innovation, competitiveness and sustainability through the creation of and an increase in value [69].…”