Industry 4.0: Challenges and success factors for adopting digital technologies in airports

TL;DR

This study investigates the challenges and success factors in adopting Industry 4.0 digital technologies in airports during COVID-19, based on a global survey of airport operators and managers.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive industry survey on Industry 4.0 adoption challenges and success factors in airports, using the TOE framework and mixed methods.

Findings

Identified 20 key challenges in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies.

Found uneven implementation levels of Industry 4.0 technologies across airports.

Highlighted best practices and success factors supporting technology adoption.

Abstract

With the advent of Industry 4.0 technologies in the last decade, airports have undergone digitalisation to capitalise on the purported benefits of these technologies such as improved operational efficiency and passenger experience. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with emergence of its variants (e.g. Delta, Omicron) has exacerbated the need for airports to adopt new technologies such as contactless and robotic technologies to facilitate travel during this pandemic. However, there is limited knowledge of recent challenges and success factors for adoption of digital technologies in airports. Therefore, through an industry survey of airport operators and managers around the world (n=102, 0.754<Composite Reliability<0.892; conducted during COVID-19), this study identifies the challenges faced in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies (n=20) as well as enhances understanding of best practices or success factors that supported technology adoption in airports. The widely used technology, organisation, environment (TOE) framework is used as a theoretically basis for the quantitative part of the questionnaire. A complementary qualitative part is used to underpin and extend the findings. The industry survey is the first-of-its-kind that was conducted to understand the implementation challenges that airport operators face in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies in the airport. The survey results have shown that that the Industry 4.0 technologies were not implemented to a similar extent in airports despite the generic challenges that were faced in adopting the various Industry 4.0 technologies in the airport.