A case study of industry 4.0 adoption for the manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia – Are we ready?

Abstract

In Malaysia, the manufacturing SME's competitiveness plays a vital role in boosting the economy. The SMEs manufacturers need to react according to the changes driven by the Industry 4.0 concepts, which now become imperative for the manufacturers to improve their global competitiveness. To compete globally and aligning with the Industry 4.0 implementation, each SMEs can adopt by participating through the Industry4WRD readiness assessment (RA) program organized by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). Hence, the main objective for this paper is to conduct a case study to assess the current readiness levels of the SMEs, and to examine the relationship of various shift factors, thrust, and dimensions representing the key variables towards defining the Industry 4.0 readiness profile for the selected manufacturing SMEs. This paper presented and discussed RA case study methodology and processes of applying the Industry4WRD RA model to help the SMEs to identify the current baseline, gaps, and area for improvement plan towards Industry 4.0 full-scale implementation. The study has identified two manufacturing companies identified as SMEs A and SMEs B, which fall according to the SMEs definition by SME Corporation of Malaysia but in two different business portfolio in order to be able to gauge and compare the results quantitatively. The results will also focus on the qualitative finding of the Industry 4.0 strategy dimension between the two samples SMEs as a comparison and reference for future improvement and study.