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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different manufacturing technologies are bundled together and how these bundles influence operations performance and, indirectly, business performance. With the emergence of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies, manufacturing companies can use a wide variety of advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) to build an efficient and effective production system. Nevertheless, the literature offers little guidance on how these technologies, including novel I4.0 technologies, should be combined in practice and how these combinations might have a different impact on performance.

Using a survey study of 165 manufacturing plants from 11 different countries, we use factor analysis to empirically derive three distinct manufacturing technology bundles and structural equation modeling to quantify their relationship with operations and business performance.

Our findings support an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary perspective. I4.0 technologies build on traditional manufacturing technologies and do not constitute a separate direction that would point towards a fundamental digital transformation of companies within our sample. Performance effects are rather weak: out of the three technology bundles identified, only “automation and robotization” have a positive influence on cost efficiency, while “base technologies” and “data-enabled technologies” do not offer a competitive advantage, neither in terms of cost nor in terms of differentiation. Furthermore, while the business performance impact is positive, it is quite weak, suggesting that financial returns on technology investments might require longer time periods.

Relying on a complementarity approach, our research offers a novel perspective on technology implementation in the I4.0 era by investigating novel and traditional manufacturing technologies together.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature and offer a more generalizable empirical investigation on the performance impact of implementing Industry 4.0, and the way important contingency factors (plant size, multinational status, country context) affect implementation efforts.

Following a systematic literature review, the empirical research is based on a large-scale survey of 705 manufacturing plants from 22 countries. Structural equation modeling is employed to discover the relationships between the main constructs of interest, complemented with subgroup analyses to offer a more detailed understanding of the main effects.

We provide evidence that technologies enabling Industry 4.0 have a positive impact on operational performance, including cost, quality, delivery and flexibility performance. Results of the analyses further indicate that (1) larger firms invest more in implementing Industry 4.0 technologies, (2) manufacturing firms in less competitive countries, especially in the South-East Asian region invest significantly more effort than competitive countries, while (3) multinational companies have no advantage over local firms.

The survey data employed in this study refers to the early years of companies embracing Industry 4.0 solutions, and thus does not contain the most recent advances in manufacturing technologies.

The paper represents one of the first studies in the literature to assess on a large-scale survey the performance impact of Industry 4.0 technologies, as well as the main contingency factors affecting the implementation of these technologies.