TY - GEN
T1 - SMME Readiness for Smart Manufacturing (4IR) Adoption
T2 - 19th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society, I3E 2020
AU - Gumbi, Lucas
AU - Twinomurinzi, Hossana
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory are phenomena regarded as a key necessity for Small, Medium and Micro Businesses (SMMEs) worldwide. Even though these 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) phenomena are generally used interchangeably, this paper sought to identify how SMME readiness for smart manufacturing has been investigated through a systematic review. The systematic review was conducted through the lens of Nooteboom, and Tornatzky and Klein’s research on technological innovation in SMMEs based on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory. The findings reveal that there is little to no research on smart manufacturing in relation to SMMEs in low-income countries particularly the African continent. The results also show that smart manufacturing is still an emergent phenomenon with disparate definitional challenges. These definitional challenges make the adoption of smart manufacturing innovations a challenge in resource-constrained contexts; but similarly present an opportunity for new definitions and theories in such contexts. The little research often treats SMMEs homogenously and as such misses their important heterogeneous (sector or industry specific) nature. Few research studies investigate SMME awareness (adequate knowledge) or make explicit the benefits (relative advantage) of smart manufacturing. Even fewer studies are explicit on the smart manufacturing technologies that are relevant for different SMME sectors. Smart manufacturing is identified as incompatible with SMME characteristics, that is SMMEs lack expertise/skills to comprehend the complexity of smart manufacturing, and also lack financial and human resources to implement smart manufacturing. Given that awareness, relative advantage, complexity and compatibility are critical barriers for SMME smart manufacturing readiness/adoption, there is a critical need for research to focus on these factors in particular for the context of resource constrained low-income country environments.
AB - Smart manufacturing, Industry 4.0 and Smart Factory are phenomena regarded as a key necessity for Small, Medium and Micro Businesses (SMMEs) worldwide. Even though these 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) phenomena are generally used interchangeably, this paper sought to identify how SMME readiness for smart manufacturing has been investigated through a systematic review. The systematic review was conducted through the lens of Nooteboom, and Tornatzky and Klein’s research on technological innovation in SMMEs based on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory. The findings reveal that there is little to no research on smart manufacturing in relation to SMMEs in low-income countries particularly the African continent. The results also show that smart manufacturing is still an emergent phenomenon with disparate definitional challenges. These definitional challenges make the adoption of smart manufacturing innovations a challenge in resource-constrained contexts; but similarly present an opportunity for new definitions and theories in such contexts. The little research often treats SMMEs homogenously and as such misses their important heterogeneous (sector or industry specific) nature. Few research studies investigate SMME awareness (adequate knowledge) or make explicit the benefits (relative advantage) of smart manufacturing. Even fewer studies are explicit on the smart manufacturing technologies that are relevant for different SMME sectors. Smart manufacturing is identified as incompatible with SMME characteristics, that is SMMEs lack expertise/skills to comprehend the complexity of smart manufacturing, and also lack financial and human resources to implement smart manufacturing. Given that awareness, relative advantage, complexity and compatibility are critical barriers for SMME smart manufacturing readiness/adoption, there is a critical need for research to focus on these factors in particular for the context of resource constrained low-income country environments.
KW - 4 Industrial Revolution
KW - 4IR
KW - Industry 4.0
KW - SMMEs
KW - Smart manufacturing
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85084916839&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-44999-5_4
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-44999-5_4
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85084916839
SN - 9783030449988
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 41
EP - 54
BT - Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology - 19th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society, I3E 2020, Proceedings
A2 - Hattingh, Marié
A2 - Matthee, Machdel
A2 - Smuts, Hanlie
A2 - Pappas, Ilias
A2 - Dwivedi, Yogesh K.
A2 - Mäntymäki, Matti
PB - Springer
Y2 - 6 April 2020 through 8 April 2020
ER -
