Shifting operations to Factory of the Future: a survey of European manufacturing companies

Factory of the Future (FoF) defines a variety of production technologies and IT solutions enabling the digitisation and automation of operations. Shifting to FoF implies both disruptive changes and far-reaching opportunities in improving competitiveness of manufacturing companies. Building on a literature review and exploratory survey conducted in a European project, this work outlines current state, challenges and gaps of FoF issues from literature and empirical point of view. It derives clusters in relation to strategies, drivers, enablers, benefits and barriers of FoF technologies adoption; organisational structures, skills and competencies required; roles of the value chain partners; importance of performance management.