The Current State of the Use of Selected Industry 4.0 Technologies in Manufacturing Companies

The technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) include both technologies related to the physical aspect of production process, and those related primarily to data and information infrastructure, whose deployment in enterprises affects their IT landscape including the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The research aims to identify the Industry 4.0 technologies that have a direct impact on ERP systems and to determine the current level of use of these technologies in medium-sized and large industrial enterprises in the Czech Republic. Based on the deductive analysis, Industry 4.0 technologies having a direct impact on ERP systems are identified, and data obtained from the questionnaire survey are statistically processed. Big data, system integration, cloud, and automatic identification and data capture have been evaluated as the Industry 4.0 technologies that have a direct impact on ERP systems. The research results document that the technology of in-house system integration is the most frequently used one. The ongoing research is directed at analysing the reasons for this finding in order to evaluate why the other technologies are not used more intensively and how enterprises make decisions on the choice of technical solution when deploying technology