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 company´s 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.