Integration of Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things in the Automotive and Motorsports Sectors: An Empirical Analysis 2020-01-5079

The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, will see the emergence and convergence of several digital, physical, and cyberphysical technologies. Therefore, the automotive and motorsports sectors arguably need appropriate preparations to embrace these changes. This paper aims to examine the knowledge level, perception of sustainability, and adoption feasibility of Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the automotive and motorsports workforce. This was achieved through an online questionnaire to collect data from professionals in these sectors; 50 replies were received. A 0-100 percentage scale was used to measure the three variables. Low percentage scores are negative, and high percentage scores are positive. One of the key findings was that the knowledge score of respondents about Industry 4.0 was 39.1%. This is disappointingly low, but perhaps to be expected. Respondents also indicated, with a 72.2% agreement score, there is a knowledge gap in these areas. Inferential analysis was performed to examine relationships between three variables. The strongest relationship was found between respondents’ perception of sustainability and perception of adoption feasibility, with a correlation coefficient of 0.87. Furthermore, to qualitatively examine the quantitative questionnaire results and people’s perception against recent industry occurrences, cross-case synthesis on four case studies of companies adopting Google and Amazon IoT platforms was performed. Utilizing these research findings, a critical discussion highlights that knowledge, sustainable development, and feasibility elements related to Industry 4.0 technologies can have positive impacts in improving innovation, meeting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), increasing sales and profits, and reaching world-class Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) levels.