Industry 4.0

: effect on the value chain of the Portuguese footwear industry

Abstract

Nowadays, markets are characterized by their dynamic and ever-changing requests, creating big challenges for manufacturers. With the emergence of industry 4.0, industrial processes have been suffering significant changes by implementing modern information technologies. Industry 4.0 comprises the digitization and smartization of the entire value chain of a manufacturing company by introducing echnologies such as cyber-physical systems or internet of things. The Portuguese footwear industry presents a large variety of different models’ requests, which requires flexible advanced production systems. The present investigation takes this premise into account and focuses in pursuing how the implementation of industry’s 4.0 technologies affects the Portuguese footwear manufacturers along the value chain, creating opportunities to innovate client experience, smart production and employees’ qualifications. With the main purpose of creating foundations for the research, an extensive literature review was conducted. Afterwards, a qualitative and exploratory investigation was performed based on interviews to collect insights of three industry experts and ten footwear companies’ representatives. It was possible to notice that companies, in general, are investing in the implementation of new technologies in different departments in order to become more competitive and productive. However, there are some constraints regarding the rigidity of some technologies and the attraction of new workers to the footwear sector.

Date of Award	13 Jul 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Jorge Julião (Supervisor) & Marcelo Gaspar (Supervisor)