Identification and severity assessment of challenges in the adoption of industry 4.0 in Indian construction industry

Abstract

The current exploratory study identifies the major challenges in the adoption of Industry 4.0 framework in the Indian construction industry and subsequently ranks the challenges on the basis of the severity. Based on the extant literature review and personal interaction with construction management, information technology (IT) professionals, and academicians, twenty-five challenges were identified. After validating the challenges, they were ranked from most severe to least severe using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method based on rough set theory that leans on the indiscernibility relation between the objects. The study indicates that huge initial investments and costs incurred to mobilize the internet of things (IoT) enabled framework in the construction firms are the major obstacles to the adoption of the Industry 4.0 methods. The recruitment of experts to train the employees and workers is seen as another big hurdle in the aforementioned objective. It is a challenge to educate and train them on sophisticated technology that requires a basic understanding of computer fundamentals and IT-related concepts that is found lacking in the workers employed at the lower levels. Proper maintenance of sensitive tools and equipment such as IoT devices is a challenging task due to the nature of the activities taking place at construction sites. The multi-criteria method of ranking based on Dominance-based Rough Set Analysis (DRSA) has never been attempted to rank the challenges and assign a severity score. The study adds novelty to the existing literature in the domain of multi-criteria ranking by including a tool that is new to this area of research.