Implications of Industry 4.0 to companies’ performance: A comparison between Brazil and Germany

Abstract

Goal: The present paper aims to investigate what are the main implications of Industry 4.0 technologies for production management.
 Design / Methodology / Approach: The study was carried out through a survey with companies of the metal-mechanic and automotive industry of the Curitiba Metropolitan Region (Brazil) and of the Upper Bavaria Region (Germany) in order to determine the overall implementation level of technologies commonly associated with Industry 4.0 and their respective impacts to operations performance objectives.
 Results: The results reveal that the overall implementation and improvement levels of the Industry 4.0 technologies is higher in Germany than in Brazil. Regarding the technologies, the Internet of Things presented one of the highest overall improvement levels for both regions, showing that the adoption of these technology could bring significant improvements for all performance objectives.
 Limitations of the investigation: The results obtained with the present research refer only to the scenario of Curitiba and Metropolitan Region and the Upper Bavaria Region, more specifically from the companies of the metal-mechanic and automotive sectors and may differ from other sectors or regions.
 Practical implications: From this research, companies that are willing to invest in new technologies can find a starting point to understand the benefits that they can possibly achieve based on results obtained from companies that have already adopted the technologies in Brazil and Germany.
 Originality / Value: Studies that formally discuss the implications of the Industry 4.0 technologies for production management are lacking. Most studies focus excessively on the technologies without approaching their impact on management systems.