Development and Validation of Industry 4.0 Readiness Scale — A Formative Model

The purpose of this paper is to develop a suitable formative scale for Industry 4.0 readiness assessment and validate in the Indian steel manufacturing sector. For this, a literature review was undertaken to identify the relevant dimensions and items to assess the Industry 4.0 readiness at micro-level. Further, a pilot study and content validity were undertaken with experts from the industry and academia to find out the relevance of the dimensions and their items. The index thus developed was administered among top-level managers from steel manufacturing organizations and the data was analyzed using PLS-SEM. The findings revealed the most important parameters — strategy & organization; business model; manufacturing & operations; supply chain; products & services along with 21 indicators to be significant in all cases to assess Industry 4.0 readiness.