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1. Introduction
The term Industry 4.0 is the reminiscent of the fourth industrial revolution which is upon us. The first three industrial revolutions spanned almost 200 years. The first industrial revolution, which occurred at the end of seventeenth century, was driven by the advent of steam engines, water power and mechanization. The second industrial revolution was driven by the assembly lines, pioneered by Henry Ford who first officialized mass production almost a century ago. The third industrial revolution, which occurred in the 1970s, was driven by the use of computer and automation in manufacturing processes. The term Industry 4.0 stem from its German equivalent “Industrie 4.0” which was introduced in 2011 at the Hannover Fair. Industry 4.0 immediately became the focus of the government in Germany, and many other European countries. In general, Industry 4.0 is interpreted as the application of the cyber physical systems within industrial production systems, which can be an equivalent to what has been introduced as industrial internet by General Electric in the North America (Posada et al., 2015). Industry 4.0 might be in near future, yet, most design principles and technologies that enable Industry 4.0 have already been used in practice, and they have been an active area of research for almost a decade. Scholars believe that Industry 4.0 is an upcoming phenomenon, whether it is wanted or not. Similar to the internet that challenged the consumer world with uncertainty in 1990s, and later emerged as a dominating and vital technological phenomenon, Industry 4.0 is a potential hit rather than a hype. Thus, all manufacturers need to ready themselves to embrace this potential industrial revolution to remain competitive in the turbulent and hyper-competitive market.
Technological innovations and changes in business environments affect both firms’ short-term performance and long-term sustainability. When future directions and options in technology are obscure and uncertain, firms need to formulate an appropriate technology strategy to support their planning for interacting with upcoming future technological developments such as Industry 4.0 (Ivanov et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2013). From both strategic and technologic perspectives, the transitioning toward Industry 4.0 requires a comprehensive strategic roadmap that visualizes every further step on the route toward an entirely digital manufacturing enterprise (Sarvari et al., 2018). Contemporary...