Key Enablers Assessment to Implement Industry 4.0 Technologies in the Future for the Turkish Manufacturing Sector

Introduction

SMEs have to make extra efforts to find ways to cope with growing pressures in today's intense competitive environment. As a result of this situation, need for new applications is getting higher day by day (Mittal, Khan, Romero, & Wuest, 2018). At this point, smart manufacturing systems that can create the necessary flexibility in adapting to changing conditions are the need of the day. By the smart manufacturing systems, simple and routine jobs as well as complex and highly skilled and competent jobs are digitized increasingly under the name of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). I4.0 refers to interactive systems supported people, machines, equipment and data exchange that are connected to each other over the network because of developing technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, cyber physical systems, 3D printers, robots, and automation (Kamble, Gunasekaran, & Sharma, 2018).

Not only technological developments but also economic crises and diseases have affected the operations of SMEs. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which emerged at the end of 2019, has quickly become a global pandemic and has caused great damage to the economies of several countries. According to the World Economic Outlook Update (2020) the global economy is expected to contract sharply by 4.9 percent in 2020. Compared with large companies, SMEs are vulnerable to the impact of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic due to resource constraints, which could be human based, financial and technical (Martin, Romero, & Wegner, 2019). (Business for Goals Platform (B4G), 2020) stated that 62% of enterprises substantially impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Although, SMEs are more intense to sudden crises more than large companies, they have some advantages: Much more flexibility due to their small structure and uncomplicated managerial characteristics makes their response mechanism to crises better than larger companies (Juergensen, Guimón, & Narula, 2020). In the smaller companies, the decision-makers get close to their stakeholders and can obtain important market information while responding to crises (Eggers, 2020). So, as a part of crises management for the SMEs is to imply new technologies quickly during COVID-19.

Companies that effectively implement I4.0 enablers can improve their competitive advantage, market potential with the formation of new product models, manufacturing processes and operational processes (Maresova et al., 2018). Companies and even countries have to prepare themselves for number of changes to survive in this new and technological world (Lee, Kao, & Yang, 2014). The manufacturing industry is the backbone of some large economies, such as the USA, Europe, China or Japan (Prause, 2019). however, they have recently created local programs to improve the development and adoption of I4.0 technologies (Dalenogare, Benitez, Ayala, & Frank, 2018). Even at this countries, SMEs generally do not have the financing and information resources to invest the transition to high level technology (Bär, Herbert-Hansen, & Khalid, 2018; Brunswicker & Vanhaverbeke, 2015). It pushes them to be more careful while they are planning their investments to I4.0.

Turkey is an upper-middle-income economy and is the world's 18th largest economy in terms of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) (Dünya Bankası ve Türkiye, n.d.). SMEs play a significant role in Turkey's economy. According to Eleven Development Plan (Decision of The Grand National Assembly of Turkey Decision on the Approval of the Eleventh Development Plan (2019-2023), 2019) “As of 2017, there are approximately 3.09 million SMEs in Turkey and 99.8 percent of total enterprises, 74.2 percent of employment, 54.1 percent of value added, 56.2 percent of exports, 19.6 percent of R&D expenditures are composed of SMEs.”

Industry and Technology Ministry of Turkey has established a new department in charge of the digital transformation of the industry. Under the General Directorate of R&D Incentives, the 4th Industrial Revolution Department works specifically to improve the digital skills of SMEs (SME Policy Index: Western Balkans and Turkey 2019 Assessing The Implementation of The Small Business Act For Europe, n.d.). Therefore, the development of new policies for SMEs and implementation of them is critical for Turkey. In this context, SMEs in Turkey should be evaluated based on various I4.0 applications to provide strategy and roadmap for companies.