Industry 4.0 – Only designed to fit the German automotive industry : A multiple case study on the feasibility of Industry 4.0 to Swedish SMEs

Abstract: Industry 4.0 is still in an early development phase and it promises to bring remarkable benefits to the manufacturing industry around the world when employing the Smart Factory application in large organizations and their supply chains. Initiatives incorporating this concept can already be found in Sweden. However, there is a risk of a miss-match when trying to introduce Industry 4.0 to SME’s as the concept, with its pursuit of becoming flexible and achieving the desired “batch size one”, is mainly being developed around large German manufacturing firms. In Sweden SMEs account for more than 99,8% of all enterprises, and in 2015 they accounted for 52% of all employments within the manufacturing sector in Sweden. Therefore, it is of great importance to see if this predicted change within the manufacturing industry will be feasible for the Swedish manufacturing SMEs as well to ensure that they are being considered and approach in an accurate way for a successful implementation of Industry 4.0 in Sweden.