The Barriers and Challenges in Smart Manufacturing Adoption for SMEs: A Review

Smart manufacturing, as a buzzword in recent years, is increasingly attracting attention in academia and industry. However, it is challenging for most manufacturing enterprises as they are uncertain about the ROI of smart manufacturing, and they are currently confronting many difficulties and hurdles. In previous studies, most researchers tended to emphasize larger companies while small and medium enterprises (SMEs) received limited attention. To comprehensively understand the barriers and challenges of smart manufacturing adoption faced by manufacturing companies especially SMEs, the author of this paper conducted a systematic review to identify more than 80 barriers and challenges which are classified into five categories: nature of SMEs, technology, organization, environment, and financial. The top factors include high investment, lack of skilled workforce, lack of strategy and awareness, and security issues. Furthermore, the author pointed out that we should not neglect some less frequently mentioned factors, such as limited bandwidth and speed of internet transfer, and the energy needed for data transmission.