Sustained competitive advantage using Industry 4.0 strategies: a case of UK infrastructure sector

Abstract

Globally, technological development is growing rapidly where nations around the world are becoming more digital and data driven to shift into the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). The United Kingdom is on the route to follow these footsteps as their government have set plans to digitise and automate industries to achieve the goal of better efficiency and productivity thus, improving the economy. Despite the efforts from the UK Government enforcing a mandate in a minimum Level 2 BIM (Building Information Model) for all public sector projects over the contract is over 12 months and worth £10,000,000 or more, organisations within the infrastructure sector are still witnessing challenges in incorporating industry 4.0 agenda within their projects and processes. Additionally, there is a scarcity of literature and research on the implementation of industry 4.0 strategies within the UK infrastructure sector to increase productivity and improve organisations competitiveness. Consequently, this research aims to conduct an evaluation of the UK infrastructure sector and their implementation of industry 4.0 strategies to improve processes and competitiveness. This research uses a qualitative approach, and 21 interviews were conducted from five large UK infrastructure sector organisations and eight small to medium sized organisations within the sector. Purposive sampling was adopted in the early stages of research which was turned into snowball sampling further in the research. The data collection method adopted was semi structured interviews where the interviews data were analysed through thematic analysis to gain a wider perspective of the interview data. To accomplish the aim of the research, the following systematic approaches were adopted; TISM (Total Interpretive Structural Model), Fuzzy MICMAC (Fuzzy Matrice d’Impacts Croises-Multiplication Applique an Classment), GTMA (Graph Theoretic and matrix Approach), and the Maturity Model. This research outputs a framework and a developed readiness tool. The results have suggested that the infrastructure sector have identified four key change processes that are vital for industry 4.0 strategies: People, Processes, Strategies, and Tools/Technology. The UK infrastructure sector is behind in complying with the laws set by the UK government despite organisations providing the required tools for implementation. It has been found that competitiveness has been one of the main key drivers for organisations implementing industry 4.0 initiatives. Software and hardware challenges were highlighted as the main challenges for industry 4.0 initiatives implementation within the infrastructure sector. The results of this research study highlight useful intuitions that would be beneficial to the UK infrastructure sector and the decision makers within their organisations to adopt and implement industry 4.0 initiatives to provide value to organisations productivity and efficiency.