Industry 4.0 readiness assessment for apparel industry: A study in the Sri Lankan context

Abstract

Sri Lankan apparel industry is the most significant and driving contributor to the country’s economy by constituting a large portion of GDP. In the highly competitive apparel world, manufacturers search solutions for problems such as worker inadequacy while minimizing the human impact. Therefore, there is a need for apparel manufacturers to enhance value chain processes with the latest technologies. Industry 4.0 is the fourth industrial revolution that transforms the physical production into a combined cyber-physical production environment with IoT and decentralized intelligence. It enhances the process functions from new product development to logistics by providing real-time visibility of the production flow. Existing literature mentions the applications of Industry 4.0 in the apparel industry, but these have not addressed the issue of assessing the readiness for its adaptation in the apparel value chain process. Hence this scrutiny proposes a model to assess the current level of readiness of the Sri Lankan apparel industry to adapt Industry 4.0 technologies and practices. The model was developed based on a systematic review of literature with the industry experts' guidance. The factors that determine the readiness for Industry 4.0 within an organizational context were classified under four categories; People, Process, Technology and Data which were defined as readiness dimensions. The proposed model consists of five readiness levels from 0 to 4 namely: Stranger, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Elite. This model enables managers to measure the readiness for adapting of Industry 4.0 in selected apparel value chain processes by using the specified minimum requirements under each dimension and level. The outcome of this study indicates that Sri Lankan apparel industry is in "Intermediate" level in terms of overall readiness with a value of 1.91 in the predefined readiness scale from 0 to 4.