Abstract:

The Industry 4.0 concept allows us to carry out business processes in a more efficient and productive manner, providing a vision of manufacturing with all its processes interconnected by means of the Internet of Things. In this line of action, universities are adapting the Industrial Engineering study programmes in order to provide the necessary skills and knowledge to fulfil the Industry 4.0 challenges. However, despite the great interest in Industry 4.0 projects owing to the fact that there is a growing market with a high profitability, the definition of economic-financial studies with which to study the viability of the different technologies involved (big data and analytics, autonomous robots, simulation, horizontal and vertical system integration, the industrial Internet of Things, cybersecurity, the cloud, additive manufacturing and augmented reality) has not been appropriately exploited to date. One of the main reasons is that these particular types of Industry 4.0 projects are in a nascent state of development, signifying that there is hardly any empirical data regarding issues such as estimation of the costs, which makes it difficult to achieve an evaluation with an adequate level of confidence. On the other hand, in the Industrial Engineering Degrees at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, there is limited attention as regards economic aspects since the number of available hours in the study programmes is very limited and resources are also scarce.
The objective of this work is to address these gaps by providing a training complement for the development of final degree projects and, at the same time, facilitating the adaptation of future engineers trained at Universidad of Castilla-La Mancha to this new technological revolution. The training complement considers the following innovative aspects: (a) a novel technical study of the life-cycle costs (non-existent in the current scientific literature) into which the development of an Industry 4.0 project can be decomposed. This technical study has been performed based on engineering judgement, the most recent scientific literature, internal technical reports of our research group at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, and guidelines provided by specialized companies within the Industry 4.0 and; (b) definition of an economic-financial model for Industry 4.0 projects which complements the contents of the subject Business Management taught in the Industrial Engineering Degrees (first semester of the second course) at Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha which considers the following aspects: (i) definition of the fundamental variables of the economic project; (ii) definition of the financing structure; (iii) definition of the forecast balance, income statement and sources, and application of funds for the project’s entire service life; (iv) determination of the cost-benefit analysis; (v) analysis of the most important economic-financial ratios; and, (vi) sensitivity analysis, with the aim of detecting business risks when fundamental variables of the project oscillate.

Keywords:

Innovation, Technology, Economics Concepts, Final Degree Projects, Industry 4.0.