Analysis of the factors affecting the ERP utilization level in regard to industry 4.0 activities of SMEs in Turkey

Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation has become an increasingly important issue in order not to fall behind the economic and social evolutions in our era as well as to take advantage of emerging opportunities. Turkey is one of the countries that has an Industry 4.0 roadmap. The industry in Turkey is primarily based upon SMEs as in many other countries, and SMEs form the backbone of Turkey in its digital transformation. SMEs need to digitalize and adopt new business models in order to be able to benefit from emerging opportunities as well as to not lose their competitive advantage. Therefore, the issue of SMEs adoption of Industry 4.0 concept has become a significant subject to be examined. In this study, an ERP Based SME Industry 4.0 Maturity Model is designed in order to adopt the effective use of ERP systems which are addressed as the backbone of Industry 4.0, for SMEs to perceive their position of development within the Industry 4.0 transformation and to support their readiness. Among the Multi-Criteria Decision Making techniques, Analytical Hierarchy Process, and DEMATEL method are adopted in this study. Prominent concepts in the literature within the context of ERP-SME-Industry 4.0 are presented to decision makers who have expertise in Industry 4.0, digitalization, and related fields. Afterwards, the factors identified in line with the decision makers' preferences were examined to form dimensions of the maturity model. The outcome of the study forms a model that can provide a roadmap for SMEs to determine their maturity and readiness for Digitalization, ERP, and Industry 4.0 which is applicable regardless of their sector.