Development of industry 4.0 systems in SMEs environments

Industry 4.0 is the current fourth industrial revolution, which is continuously modifying industrial environments towards technology evolution dealing with ongoing social, economic, and political changes. As a result, companies working in several industries are facing the need for disruptive industrial applications and their business evolution. Small and Medium Enterprises, that traditionally strive to keep up with industrial revolutions since they often are unprepared to understand novelties and to deal with changes that revolutions bring, often fail to identify how they must adapt to new industrial scenario. Dealing with this issue, especially the lack of knowledge of manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises about new technologies and their gap in recognizing new business principles, this thesis proposes a two-fold approach. Firstly, the recent literature on Industry 4.0 in the engineering field is reviewed for identifying a simple technology stack of Industry 4.0, that can be easily understood also in environments that lack advanced knowledge of technology evolution. The technology stack is provided in the form of a Reference Model, since its suitability for identifying components needed for coping with industrial changes. The model is tested verifying its interoperability with other relevant Reference Models and Architectures of Industry 4.0. Secondly, a Maturity Model is designed, capable of assessing whether manufacturing companies have adopted recent disruptive technologies of Industry 4.0 and they comply with its new business principles, and in which direction they must evolve considering the supply chain in which they do business. The Maturity Model is then tested in the manufacturing and processing agro-food industry of the food valley, located in the Parma district of the Emilia-Romagna region, in Italy.