Barriers to Industry 4.0 in Manufacturing Companies : Identification, Categorization and Analysis of Challenges

The Fourth Industrial Revolution poses significant challenges to manufacturing companies from technological, organizational, and managerial perspectives due to a large number of barriers to its realization. However, there is a lack of detailed studies and systematic literature (SLR) reviews that deeply and comprehensively assess the topic. This paper presents an SLR to analyze the existing barriers to implementing Industry 4.0 in manufacturing industries. Thirty-nine papers were analyzed in depth, and 515 barriers were identified. After standardizing the labels, 27 barriers were defined, analyzed according to their importance, and categorized within five categories: organizational, legal, technical, social and economical. A bibliometric analysis to identify methodological and geographical aspects of the publications was carried out, as well as a discussion of their content. Seven of the 27 barriers proved to be the most relevant, corresponding to 50% of the occurrences in the papers. They are: Lack of competence/skills, Cost/investment for implementation, Lack of standardization / regulatory issues, Technological issues / IT systems, Cybersecurity issues, General data issues, and lack or poor infrastructure. The results of this study highlight the most crucial barriers wherein researchers and practitioners should focus their strategic efforts and indicate relevant points for a future research agenda