Development of an Industry 4.0 competency maturity model

Abstract

Coined as Germany’s high-tech strategy, Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is being adopted globally and is happening exponentially. Furthermore, I4.0 impacts manufacturing processes, technology, and systems and extends to employees' competency requirements and, consequently, the preparation of graduates who will be ready to practice engineering with professional-level technical know-how and non-technical skills in I4.0. However, sub-Saharan African developing countries such as South Africa are still to catch up with the phases of the industrial revolution that have already played out in developed countries. In addition, South Africa seek to achieve its National Development Plan (NDP) and United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Therefore, South Africa faces the challenge of achieving sustainable adoption of I4.0 in its manufacturing industry. Factors such as noticeable youth unemployment and lack of workforce competencies contributes to this challenge. The problem responded to in this research is the lack of I4.0 competency reference models, which could align industry competency requirements and skills development. This research applied elaborated Action Design Research (eADR) diagnosis and design phases to develop an I4.0 competency maturity model (I4.0CMM) that simultaneously guides and assesses I4.0 competency development and industry competency requirements within the South African context. The Delphi technique was incorporated in the I4.0CMM development iteration stage to ensure consideration of expert input. The diagnosis and design phases comprised two and four iterations, respectively, presented as academic articles. The I4.0CMM can be used by engineering education and workplace human resources development providers as a benchmark framework for aligning graduate attributes (GAs) and required professional competencies and identifying improvement points required to match curriculum provisions to the current and future industry requirements resulting from the fourth – and later – industrial revolutions. Furthermore, it can aid students and graduates in selfevaluating and self-regulating their achievement of I4.0 skills requirements and planning their professional development. Therefore, enhancing I4.0 competencies development in both the industry and academic institutions through training, reskilling, and upskilling could potentially drive sustainable adoption of I4.0 in the country’s manufacturing industry. Furthermore, the research significantly adds to the knowledge of factors that inhibit sustainable adoption of I4.0 in the context of the South African environment. The results and findings of the investigations conducted in this research significantly contribute to filling the literature gap in the in the South African manufacturing industry’s understanding about I4.0 and its accompanying

skills requirements. The research further distinctively contributes to comprehending specific I4.0 skills requirements in the South African manufacturing industry. This research, therefore, offers a direction for broader investigations of sustainable adoption of I4.0 in the sub-Saharan African developing countries. Four industrial engineering capability functions were used to illustrate the model. However, the research did not implement and test the I4.0CMM in a real-world situation. The I4.0CMM presented industrial engineering capability functions in the capability functions domain and did not specify the capability functions levels, i.e., technician, technologist, and engineer. Therefore, future work could consider implementing and testing the model in a real-world situation, incorporating the capability functional levels, and adapting the capability functions domain to other engineering professions.