Industry 4.0 as an Enabler of Servitization in the Plant Engineering Business: Literature Review and Development of a Conceptual Research Model

Industry 4.0 technologies and technological concepts can be considered as a starting point to strengthen the long-term competitiveness of modern enterprises. In this context, only a handful of recent studies consider the importance of professional Industry 4.0-driven servitization and, therefore, investigate the causal relationship between servitization and company performance. This paper aims to preliminary scrutinize a set of influencing factors that are required to build organizational competence in servitization. Based on the theories of market-based view (MBV), the resource-based view (RBV), and theories on dynamic capabilities (DC), the authors introduce the constructs of digitization and ICT and networks and relationships as success factors for the companýs competence in servitization. Moreover, the proposed conceptual model serves as a foundation for further multivariate analyses in the empirical environment of the plant engineering business.