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1. Introduction
Over the past few years, the rapid evolution of information and communication technologies and their integration into supply chains have led to the advent of the fourth industrial revolution – “Industry 4.0” (Dalenogare et al., 2018; Frank et al., 2019). There is increased competition within business, resulting from technological innovations and changing customer requirements. This transformational change in business ecosystems will profoundly influence operational models/frameworks and management strategies to adapt and integrate with new challenges in an evolving ecosystem (Barreto et al., 2017). Since the beginning of Industry 4.0, an increasing number of companies have adopted principles and technologies of the new industrial revolution to improve performance and productivity (Barreto et al., 2017; Rachinger et al., 2018). The key strength of Industry 4.0 is its high impact on many facets of society. From a typical user perspective, there is clearer visibility of the influence of Industry 4.0 on both the professional, domestic and social fields. Smart homes, smart cities and offices and e-health systems are only a few examples of the probable scenarios of how the new paradigm will revolutionise the world (Bandyopadhyay and Sen, 2011). Similarly, the most apparent impact of Industry 4.0 is expected in the industrial manufacturing and management, logistics and business process management areas (Strange and Zucchella, 2017). Digitalisation is a must for supply chain (SC) systems to survive in today's highly dynamic and competitive business environment (Wu et al., 2016; Pereira and Romero, 2017). Companies need to adopt emerging technologies in their business processes and manage the increasing data flow in their value chain for effective management of next generation digital SCs.
Following the Industry 4.0 trend, there is a growing need for studies on Industry 4.0 implementation in SC networks. Although some studies exist on frameworks and roadmaps for the Industry 4.0 transformation (e.g. Sarvari et al., 2018; Ghobakhloo, 2018), an overall system approach is lacking, including complex systems such as SCs. To contribute to this evident research gap, the study examines the adaption and transformation to Industry 4.0 in the SC context. A good starting point is to identify the potential drivers, success factors and barriers for this technological transformation (Kamble et al., 2018). Therefore, first,...