24th International Conference on Production Research (ICPR 2017) ISBN: 978-1-60595-507-0 PERSPECTIVES OF INDUSTRY 4.0 DEVELOPMENT IN POLAND – PRELIMINARY RESEARCH RESULTS A. Grzelczak, K. Werner-Lewandowska, M. Kosacka Faculty of Engineering Management, Poznan University of Technology, Strzelecka 11 street, Poznan, Poland Abstract Over the last few years, the fourth industrial revolution has attracted practices and academia worldwide, however there are still many gaps related to the Industry 4.0. In the presented paper, there was assumed, that there are key companies’ competences, which are essential for the Industry 4.0 development. Therefore, it was examined, if those competences are important for companies, which have not introduced Industry 4.0, yet. If there is cohesion in perception of those competences, the perspective of the Industry 4.0 introduction in polish companies is positive, what may indicate readiness to that concept realization. Otherwise, the perspective is pessimistic. The main aim of the presented research, was an attempt to outline the perspective of developing the concept of Industry 4.0 in Poland, in terms of key company’s competences. The indirect aim was to point out the direction of Polish companies' development towards the Industry 4.0 concept. In research there was used the questionnaire survey method, conducted on randomly selected group of Polish companies. Findings of this paper can be used as the basis for future research. Keywords: Company’s competence, Industry 4.0 1 INTRODUCTION The term “Industry 4.0”, whose synonym is ‘Industrie 4.0’, was proposed in 2011, in order to achieve technological innovation leadership of the German economy [1]. Since then, it becomes one of the most popular manufacturing topics among industry and academia, worldwide, however it may be named in different way, in various countries. Similar strategies were e.g. “Industrial Internet” in USA [2], “Internet plus” in China [3], ‘Future of Manufacturing’ in UK [4]. Moreover, that concept has been perceived as the fourth industrial revolution with extreme impact on future manufacturing [5]. Industry 4.0 may be considered from the perspective of the basic technologies, goals of the idea, and selected scenarios. [6, p. 3928]. In the paper, authors assumed that the Industry 4.0 is defined by the following key elements, including: ● Cyber-physical systems (CPS), with the feedback of cyber systems and physical one, resulting in new level of integration characterized by interaction and coordination of computational processes with physical processes [7, p.1] with use of sensors, actuators, control processing units and communication devices. [8, p.25], ● Internet of things (IoT) referred to everyday objects (physical) turning into so-called “smart things” by Internet connection [8, p. 28], ● Smart factory, built on the idea of a decentralized production system, where machines and equipment are improving processes through automation and self- optimization and human beings and machines communicate with each other as in a social network [6], ● Other technologies e.g. wearables, augmented reality applications, autonomous vehicles (incl. drones), or big data analytics [8, p.25] To sum up, the concept of Industry 4.0 describes the future of manufacturing “affected” by IT, where processes are realized by networked human and machines on the basis of smart objects in order to perform required tasks and goals in the CPS environment with big amount of data and common digitalization. According to results of literature review made on the Industry 4.0 in [9], authors claim that the awareness of the Industry 4.0 is still increasing, however the highest level was achieved by European countries, particularly Germany, although there can be observed great interest in Industry 4.0 in China and USA (Table 1). Table 1. Number of papers about Industry 4.0 per year and per country. Database Number of papers Per Country (top 5) Per Year Total SCOPUS Germany 211 China 31 Austria 23 USA 22 UK 21 2017 57 437 2016 205 2015 106 2014 47 2013 21 2012 1 Web of Science Germany 115 China 32 UK 11 Austria 10 Czech Republic 10 2017 15 2016 143 2015 57 2014 16 2013 4 2012 1 236 There were used two electronic databases, to collect academic research papers that: (1) contained one of identified terms: “Industry 4.0” or ‘Industrie 4.0’ in the title, (2) were published in journals, conference proceedings or book series; (3) were written in the English language, (4) were available at the date of 20.05.2017. Data presented in the Table 1 confirmed, that Industry 4.0 is a young concept with only a five – years past, so far. The concept is well-examined by German researches, who have 133