Industry 4.0 Readiness Level and Operational Performance: Empirical Evidence from the Indian Auto Components Manufacturers

Talan, Kokil (2025) Industry 4.0 Readiness Level and Operational Performance: Empirical Evidence from the Indian Auto Components Manufacturers. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Text Kokil Talan PhD _Thesis_Final Version_Final Award June 2025.pdf - Accepted Version Download (5MB)

Abstract

Industry 4.0 is significantly impacting the operations, processes and business models and has attracted attention among manufacturers of developed economies, where the adoption is more advanced as compared to emerging economies. However, challenges remain entailing the adoption of Industry 4.0 in emerging economies. To fully unfold Industry 4.0, manufacturers need to assess the readiness of their firms and identify the preconditions which can be manifested in the implementation of Industry 4.0. This study was motivated by the need to identify these preconditions and extended into evaluating how such preconditions contribute to operational performance, which has always been pivotal for managers before embracing any technological advancement. This research endeavours to fill the gap in the literature by integrating two subsets of Industry 4.0, encompassing Industry 4.0 readiness and operational performance. This study investigated the relationship between readiness level and operational performance within the context of the Indian auto component industry.

A mixed methodology was adopted to explore the current practices and operational performance through semi-structured interviews with 15 small and large-scale companies. Following a web survey on 217 Indian auto component firms, this study elucidates the Industry 4.0 readiness field by focusing on how readiness levels affect operational performance. Following exploratory factor analysis (EFA), four factors were used for structural equation modelling to test the number of hypotheses for determining the relationship between Industry 4.0 readiness level (independent construct) and operational performance (dependent construct).

The readiness level confirmed the assumption that companies still require several steps to scale to level 4 as 60.8% of firms are at the beginner and intermediate level. The research found that Industry 4.0 readiness levels have a significant positive relationship with production process efficiency and network integration. There is no significant relationship between Industry 4.0 readiness level and responsiveness towards OEM demand. Network integration is the key operational performance measure considering it makes the largest contribution to production process efficiency, while technology readiness level contributes more to network integration than production process efficiency and responsiveness towards OEM demand.

The thesis contributed to the existing research in the following ways. First, the study developed a progressive tool to measure the Industry 4.0 readiness for operational performance. Second, this research contributes to the existing literature by refining concepts such as network integration, production process efficiency and responsiveness in the context of Industry 4.0. These concepts were further tested with a quantitative study and attempts to provide a holistic framework for measuring performance with operational variables in the context of Industry 4.0. As a theoretical contribution, this study tested the relationship between Industry 4.0 readiness level and operational performance from a Resource-Based View perspective.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 25 June 2025 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Industry 4.0 readiness, auto component, operational performance, manufacturing, Industry 4.0, Resource Based View (RBV)
Subjects:	CAH10 - engineering and technology > CAH10-01 - engineering > CAH10-01-03 - production and manufacturing engineering CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-02 - business studies CAH17 - business and management > CAH17-01 - business and management > CAH17-01-09 - others in business and management
Divisions:	Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection Faculty of Business, Law and Social Sciences > College of Business, Digital Transformation & Entrepreneurship
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	07 Jul 2025 13:37
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2025 13:37
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16478

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