Gap analysis of current industrial technology towards the Industry 4.0 scheme: A case study of SMEs in the central region of Thailand
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Abstract
Thailand’s government allocates part of its budget to supporting and promoting the international competitiveness of SMEs since SMEs in Thailand account for 42.2% of the GDP. However, the competence in Industry 4.0 technology seems to show only minor improvement. This study aims to extract the problems reported when conducting a project to promote digital technology for transforming SMEs’ manufacturing processes. The data were collected from 187 SMEs of all sizes across all sectors in the central region of Thailand during 2018–2019. In summary, Thailand’s SMEs are mostly categorized at level 2.0 in industrial technological advancement. The most frequently reported problem was the lacking systematic planning and control of the production process, leading to low-performance efficiency and waste in the process. This problem also caused barriers to the lean automation transformation scheme. Despite the support from the government in technology and investment consultancy, smart technology and techniques for performance improvement and process standardization should be provided to facilitate SMEs’ leap towards Industry 4.0 sustainably.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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