Case study about industry 4.0 in the internal supply chain of a defense company: are we ready for industry 4.0?

This thesis aims to aid with the challenges the internal supply chain in the defense industry face regarding the implementation of industry 4.0. The literature indicates that hindering factors could occur in the categories Organization, Employee, External Context and Characteristics of the Innovation. This qualitative research made use of eight semi-structured interviews and a peer-session. The transcripts were analyzed by open-coding, axial-coding and selective-coding. Overall, most hindering factors occur in the category Organization and second in the category Employee. The category External Context do not contain that many factors and the influence on the implementation of industry 4.0 is almost nil. The peer session resulted in a top 3 hindering factors: lack of strategy, lack of multidisciplinary team, lack of skills and knowledge. This study offers theoretical and practical implications for the internal supply chain regarding the hindering factors on the implementation of industry 4.0.