| dc.description.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. | en_US |
