Quality managers and their future technological expectations related to Industry 4.0

Abstract

Industry 4.0, referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, is becoming part of business life and it fundamentally influences the quality of business processes and products. In particular, intelligent technologies that are indispensable in this industrial revolution play a dominant role. This paper presents the results of empirical research focusing on the current state with implementing intelligent technologies, which are grouped into four categories: smart devices, identification technologies, localisation/navigation technologies and information technology/robotics. The empirical research was conducted from a large sample of industrial enterprises in the Slovak Republic. All enterprises were multinational companies whose parent companies reside abroad. Another question was what the expectations of quality managers with the deployment of intelligent technologies in 2025 are. Together, we have identified 14 technologies and 26 manufacturing and logistics processes. Based on the difference between the current state of use of intelligent technologies and their future deployment, we can identify their growth potential. This growth is quantified as the difference between the current state of the technology in the process and its future. In addition to the expectations of quality managers, we also determined the direction of product development in technological enterprises.