2022 Volume 11 Issue 1 Pages 256-261
The delay in digitization, which was re-recognized through the COVID-19 crisis, is being discussed as one of the factors behind the decline in productivity of Japanese industry. Even though Industry 4.0 is widely discussed as a potential measure, a lack of transparency regarding the benefits is one of the key obstacles to its introduction, especially among SMEs.
As far as we know, there is no survey on how Japanese SMEs understand the benefits of Industry 4.0 and what is the current level of the digitalization among Japanese SMEs.
We conducted a survey with 45 items, and received the responses from 22 Japanese SMEs. The responses revealed that Japanese SMEs' understanding on Industry 4.0 is rather similar to that of the conventional automatization (Industry 3.0). In addition to that, the current digitalization level seemed to be far below from what is envisioned in Industry 4.0 target level.
Finally, the proposal to fill the gap of understanding of Industry 4.0 as well as level of digitalization is discussed.
