The role of Industry 4.0 technologies in the innovation activities of food manufacturing companies

Abstract

This study analyses the opinions of Hungarian food production companies on driving forces and barriers of Industry 4.0 investments and their impact on the companies’ business performance. A questionnaire survey was carried out between 2019 and 2020 with data collection from 276 food manufacturing companies. Subsequently, the data were analysed by several statistical methods: factor analysis, K-means clustering, one-way analysis of variance, and cross-tabulation analysis. The goal of this study is to explore the process innovation problems of enterprises and introduce the increasing use of Industry 4.0 tools