**2. Development of production processes under the Industry 4.0 paradigm**

I4.0 is expected to generate a great number of benefits such as improved innovation capability, easy monitoring, and diagnosis of system multifunction, increased self-awareness and maintenance capabilities of systems, high productivity with environmentally friendly products, improved flexibility with decreased costs, unbiased, real-time, and knowledge-based decision making [24]. Likewise, emerging technologies are designed to support the processes behind those benefits [25]. Even though they may be applicable in diverse industries, those technologies can generally not be adopted as independent components, they require high management involvement and support to succeed. It is also important to understand the settings of technologies being adopted, the extend of the technology adoption, whether incremental or radical [26, 27], and the environment that will be improved by those technologies i.e. system, process, or activity. SMEs in particular, may not be aware and understand the capabilities required from management to implement such technologies.

Absorbing manufacturing disruptions and adapting is a crucial characteristic to reach with the support of the I4.0 concept and component implementations. In [18, 28] highlight the fact that robustness and resilience may not necessarily concur, but together provide production systems with a sustainable competitive advantage. Previous research [29, 30] has shown that for achieving sustainable production it is crucial to measure performance efficiently, which demands more automatic collection and management of data.

Research on the propagation of disturbances makes a clear distinction between resilience and a robust system [18]. According to [21], resilience is a competitive approach, and robustness is one of the characteristics of resilience. One common aspect presented in the mentioned studies is the variation analysis in the production processes and operations. They agree upon controlling and stabilizing variation to reduce disturbances and deviations. Nevertheless, the range is closed to product variation, which is far from the goal of full integration with the I4.0 transformation. Six characteristics to achieve resilience in I4.0 are identified by [21], these are flexibility, diversity, connectivity, knowledge, redundancy, and robustness. Yet, models and guidelines on how this can be achieved in practice are lacking.

In an analytical framework presented in [5] managerial capabilities [22] are connected with the concept of I4.0, and new technological advancements are represented as means of implementation. Their analytical framework specifies the importance of classifying I4.0 elements in terms of the desired performance objective i.e. flexibility, cost reduction, delivery time reduction, improved productivity, improved quality, and the corresponding managerial capacity that needs to exist. It depicts a close link between the performance objectives, the levels of managerial capability, and the technical resources required for achieving them.

Recognizing the different aspects of digitalization i.e. technical, managerial, and operational will make SMEs more aware of their organizational dimensions like finance, product, process, and people. In return, this acknowledgment will lead to informed decision-making [26], more accurate judgments, and results in coordination with production operations, plans, and supply chains. SME managers must understand the different ways of approaching I4.0. Reflecting on the own company's positioning supports the understanding of how to acquire benefits from this new paradigm [11].
