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This paper focuses on understanding the contribution of Industry 4.0 technologies to manufacturing flexibility.

A multiple-case study was conducted through interviews and complementary data from 12 adopters of Industry 4.0 technologies from the industrial sector. To enable a broad perspective, cases from 5 industry sectors with different technological intensity levels were studied.

The findings show that Industry 4.0 technologies are mostly used to improve machine flexibility since there is a major focus on technological approaches rather than on wider flexibility. The results also showed that cloud services, IoT, and data analytics provide the basis for flexible operation, and collaborative robots, ERP/MES/PLM, AGVs, and traceability devices are the most commonly implemented technologies for flexibility. However, inherent contingency factors such as production complexity and product life cycle need to be considered.

This article expands the research on manufacturing flexibility, considering new capabilities introduced by Industry 4.0.

This paper aims at examining how different types of shop floor performance feedback affect employee motivation and engagement. Based on this dataset, the authors analyzed the relationship between five types of performance feedback (safety, quality, productivity, improvement and individual performance) and three types of human-related outputs (motivation, role clarity and engagement) in light of socio-technical systems theory.

The authors designed a survey instrument and collected data from 492 employees of a large beverage distribution company. The authors used robust construct validity tests and multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicated significant positive effects of feedback on overall production, improvements and individual performance on all human-related outputs. In turn, safety and quality performance feedback had no statistically significant impact in motivation or engagement. These findings highlight the mixed nature of the impact of performance feedback on human-related outputs that have been neglected in the literature.

The joint analysis of the social and technical portion of performance feedback is unusual despite its clear relevance, which characterizes an original contribution of the authors’ work. Although previous literature supports the effect of performance feedback on motivation and engagement, previous studies have not tested how different types of feedback affect those social constructs.

As the level of implementation of Industry 4.0 increases, misalignments between adopted technologies and organizational factors may result in benefits below expected. This paper aims to analyze how organizational factors can contribute to a higher level of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. The paper uses a sociotechnical perspective lens to achieve this aim.

Using a sample of 231 manufacturing companies in Denmark, a leading country in Industry 4.0 readiness, the paper analyzes through cluster analysis and logistic regression whether the development of four sociotechnical dimensions – that is, Social, Technical, Work Organization and Environmental factors – in these companies can benefit the achievement of higher levels of Industry 4.0 technology adoption.

The results show that companies focused on the development of sociotechnical aspects generally present higher Industry 4.0 adoption levels. However, some sociotechnical factors are less supportive than others.

Based on these results, practitioners can plan the adoption of advanced technologies, using a systemic organizational view. This study provides evidence on a growing field with few empirical studies available. The paper contributes by providing an analysis of a leading country in Industry 4.0 implementation, presenting a systemic view on technology adoption in the Industry 4.0 context.