What is holding back industry 4.0 in emerging economies? A SWARA analysis of key barriers

The literature highlights the benefits of Industry 4.0, demonstrating how digital transformation strengthens competitiveness. However, many firms, especially in emerging economies, face significant challenges in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies due to strategic, organizational, technological, and market-related barriers, as well as socio-institutional constraints and limited integration of open innovation practices that could otherwise facilitate this transition. Understanding these barriers is essential for coping with challenges and developing effective mitigation strategies from both managerial and policy perspectives. This study aims to identify and prioritize these barriers and recommend strategies to overcome them within the context of Turkish businesses. A comprehensive literature review and expert consultations were conducted to determine the most critical obstacles to Industry 4.0 implementation, categorized under four dimensions: strategic and organizational, open innovation, technological and infrastructural, and market-related factors. To systematically analyze and prioritize these barriers, a multi-criteria decision-making framework integrating the Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method was employed, which enables efficient expert-based evaluation. Experts evaluated 19 sub-criteria across these dimensions. The results indicate that “strategic and organizational barriers” are the most critical factors hindering digital transformation in the Turkish manufacturing sector. The most influential sub-factors are the lack of a clear strategic roadmap for Industry 4.0, inadequate information security and privacy protection, and a shortage of skilled workers. These findings underscore that Industry 4.0 should be approached not merely as a technological upgrade but as a strategic and organizational transformation that requires alignment among business models, human capital, and digital governance structures. This study contributes to the literature and practitioners by identifying the implementation barriers of Industry 4.0 technologies in Türkiye, an emerging economy where contextual, institutional, and societal factors play a decisive role in shaping digital transformation outcomes.