Abstract
The automatization, dematerialization, and innovative digital systems and technologies, named Industry 4.0, are transforming the economic and social system, encompassing opportunities and challenges for growth and international expansion. In Portugal, SMEs face great difficulties and challenges because innovative digital businesses and systems enhance globalization and intensify competition. Exploratory research was designed to explore how Industry 4.0 and digitalization will influence the organization, competitiveness, and internationalization process of the SMEs under study. Results indicate that Industry 4.0 appears to be critical because it positively affected the value chain and the organizational and competitiveness level. Therefore, the companies were better positioned in their competitive advantages. This work provides insights for the study and joint understanding of digitalization and business internationalization because it integrates and relates two autonomous, complex, and strategic fields of research, with no applied studies for the Portuguese SME background.
TopIntroduction
The integration of digitalisation in production processes, industry and services has seen exponential growth, especially in recent decades, with the development of innovative digital systems and technologies, and the implementation of disruptive methods at all levels, which allow the interconnection of processes, machines, and people. This development has been called the fourth industrial revolution or industry 4.0 and it is characterised by the introduction of digital technologies that have a disruptive effect on companies' business models and the way they act and create customer value (Duričin & Herceg (2018); Salkin, aet al. (2018), Sjøbakk (2018), Xiaopu aet al. (2016)). The fourth industrial revolution is a revolution towards digitalisation, towards a knowledge-based, service-oriented society. According to Sukhodolov (2019), this revolution is evolving towards a self-organising and self-managing industrial model of fully automated production systems that instruct themselves autonomously and interactively, also leading to real-time data exchange, as well as to flexible production systems and progressively personalised production (Thoben aet al., 2017).
Indeed, automatisation, dematerialisation and digitalisation are transforming the economic and social system, encompassing opportunities in terms of optimisation of resources, cost reduction and potential for growth and international expansion. This transformation is happening at a rapid pace because Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are evolving at an extremely fast speed and, in the business context, where digitalisation and automation are the present and the future, companies, to be competitive, must be able to adapt quickly to this evolution. To improve their performance and achieve sustainable competitive advantages, companies are required to adopt digital transformation processes (Siachou aet al., 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT (Internet of Things) is concept/project that enables all devices and systems to operate together, acquiring context information in real time, as well as reaching feedback from other working systems and finally analysing the gathered data. Therefore, this concept makes it possible to interconnect everything by turning objects into dynamic elements of an integrated network, whose plants will use this information intelligently. This form of digital connexion is expected to stimulate the emergence of new differentiated products and services.
Autonomous Robots: The evolution of traditional robots have developed the path towards new collaborative robot solutions (i.e., CoBots) that can operate in conjunction with humans safely and efficiently. Human-robot interaction can enable higher productivity. Similarly, artificial intelligence built into robots can provide that they learn from human activities, improving their autonomy and flexibility.
Big Data Analysis: Big data is qualified by volume, variety, and speed (the 3Vs) and calls for new data processing and analysis techniques. High-capacity computers and communication networks make it possible to store substantial amounts of information quickly. The visualisation, analysis and sharing of data are the support for making decisions based on this valuable information with greater precision and confidence.
Augmented Reality: Augmented reality (AR) authorises the invention of a virtual environment in which humans can interact with machines by leveraging devices capable of recreating the workspace. Interesting applications of AR are related to worker training and support in manual production activities.
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Enables communication between all devices inside and outside the factory. IIoT is an open, non-deterministic network in which self-organised intelligent institutions and virtual objects are interoperable and efficient to operate autonomously in pursuit of their own (or shared) goals depending on context, circumstances, or environments.
Digital Transformation: Is a process whereby companies use digital technologies and tools to change their structure, processes, and business strategy and thus generate value and competitive advantage for the company.
Horizontal and Vertical Integration of the System: Horizontal integration indicates the creation of a global value network thru the integration and optimisation of the flow of information and goods between companies, suppliers, and clients. Vertical integration, in turn, is the integration of functions and departments from different hierarchical levels of a company, building a constant flow of data and information.
Simulation: Simulation tools can be used widely across the value chain, from product design to operations management. Modelling and simulation tools are essential for the development of digital engineering and virtual reproduction of products and processes to identify potential problems early, avoiding waste of costs and resources in production.
Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is associated with ICT infrastructure that enables ubiquitous access to data from different devices, i.e., it is a computer system in which data is stored on specialised servers and information, services and programmes are accessed remotely via the internet. The cloud can be discussed as a service and support for collaborative design, distributed manufacturing, contribution to innovation, data mining, semantic web technology and virtualisation.
Additive Manufacturing: Additive manufacturing comprises a set of technologies that ensure the production of small batches of products with a high degree of customisation. Reduction of waste, faster time to market due to timely prototyping, greater production flexibility and fewer indispensable tools are the main advantages of this technology.