The impacts of Industry 4.0: a descriptive survey in the Italian manufacturing sector Ting Zheng, Marco Ardolino, Andrea Bacchetti, Marco Perona and Massimo Zanardini RISE Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how much the Italian manufacturing companies are ready to be concretely involved in the so-called “Industry 4.0” (I4.0) journey. In particular, this paper focuses on analyzing the knowledge and adoption levels of specific I4.0 enabling technologies, also considering how organizations are involved and which are the main benefits and obstacles. Design/methodology/approach – A descriptive survey has been carried out on a total of 103 respondents related to manufacturing companies of different sizes. Data collected were analyzed in order to answer five specific research questions. Findings – The findings from the survey demonstrate that Italian manufacturing companies are in different positions in their journey toward the I4.0 paradigm, mainly depending on their size and informatization level. Furthermore, not all the business functions are adequately involved in this transformation and their awareness about this new paradigm seems quite low because of the absence of specific managerial roles to guide this revolution. Finally, there are strong differences concerning both benefits and obstacles related to the adoption of I4.0 paradigm, depending on the technology adoption level. Research limitations/implications – Future research should focus on developing case studies about pilot I4.0 practitioners in order to understand the root cause of successful cases. Both managerial and practical references should be developed, helping Italian manufacturing enterprises to consolidate and strengthen their position in global competitive market. Finally, it would be interesting to carry out the same study in other countries in order to make comparisons and suitable benchmark analyses. Originality/value – Despite scholars have debated about the adoption of technologies and the benefits related to the I4.0 paradigm, to the best of authors’ knowledge, only a few empirical surveys have been carried out until now on the adoption level of I4.0 principles in the manufacturing sector of a specific country. Keywords Information technology, Digitization, Technology, Manufacturing industry, Advanced manufacturing technology, Industry 4.0 Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction In recent years, the manufacturing context has been characterized by several phenomena such as the increase in competition among companies and the growing complexity of customer demands (Bozarth et al., 2009; Jäger et al., 2016; Tang et al., 2017; Vogel and Lasch, 2016; Wouters et al., 2005). Indeed, manufacturing companies are continuously stressed to meet the diverse preferences of customers (Stock and Seliger, 2016) and struggle for creating value through both time-to-market, and enhanced product reliability (Hirsch-Kreinsen, 2016; Kurilova-Palisaitiene et al., 2018; Tortorella and Fettermann, 2017; De Treville et al., 2014). For this reason, achieving the manufacturing of products in a batch size of one, while maintaining the economic conditions of mass production, has rapidly attracted the worldwide attention of both enterprises and governments (Lasi et al., 2014). Furthermore, industrial managers have started to adopt disruptive technologies in order to innovate business environment, leading to the creation of new sources for added value for both organizations and society (Almada-Lobo, 2016; Roblek et al., 2016). Besides manufacturing processes, the application of digital technologies may have impact on other aspects related to the enterprises, such as supply chains organization Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management © Emerald Publishing Limited 1741-038X DOI 10.1108/JMTM-08-2018-0269 Received 29 August 2018 Revised 27 November 2018 30 April 2019 21 September 2019 Accepted 18 October 2019 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: www.emeraldinsight.com/1741-038X.htm The impacts of Industry 4.0