Industry 4.0 boosts supply chain resilience: Agility delivers, over-adaptation hurts

A new peer-reviewed study reports that digitally transformed manufacturers become measurably more resilient to shocks, especially when they pair Industry 4.0 tools with customer integration and agility-building practices. The authors warn, however, that “adaptability” initiatives can backfire in capital-intensive settings if they are not carefully calibrated.

Published in Sustainability (2025) as “How Industry 4.0 Technologies Enhance Supply Chain Resilience: The Interplay of Agility, Adaptability, and Customer Integration in Manufacturing Firms,” the article analyzes how the Internet of Things, big data analytics, and AI translate into day-to-day continuity and recovery capabilities in manufacturing supply chains.

The study positions Industry 4.0 as both a strategic resource and an enabler of dynamic capabilities - an approach designed for an era defined by geopolitical instability, pandemic aftershocks, and demand volatility that strain global production networks.

How do Industry 4.0 technologies influence resilience in manufacturing?

The authors fielded a cross-sectional survey of 273 Turkish manufacturing firms and tested relationships using covariance-based structural equation modeling (AMOS 24.0) with 5,000 bootstraps, controlling for firm size and industry type. The context was chosen because Turkish manufacturers are recognized as high-tech forerunners among developing economies and offer a rigorous setting to examine digitally enabled resilience.

Results show a direct, significant lift from Industry 4.0 to supply chain resilience (β = 0.191; p < 0.001). In practical terms, digitized firms exhibit stronger ability to anticipate, absorb, and recover from disruptions, aided by end-to-end visibility and real-time response. The measurement and structural models demonstrated acceptable global fit, supporting the robustness of these effects.

Crucially, the paper frames digitalization through Resource-Based View (RBV) and Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV): technology assets are valuable and rare (RBV), but resilience materializes only when firms mobilize those assets via capabilities that sense, seize, and reconfigure in turbulent conditions (DCV).

Do agility and adaptability mediate the technology–resilience link?

The analysis disentangles two capability pathways—agility (near-term responsiveness) and adaptability (longer-horizon reconfiguration). Agility emerges as the primary conduit: Industry 4.0 is positively associated with agility (β = 0.176; p < 0.01), agility strongly predicts resilience (β = 0.581; p < 0.001), and agility partially mediates the technology–resilience relationship (indirect effect 0.102, 95% CI [0.021, 0.182]).

By contrast, adaptability displays a counterintuitive pattern. Although Industry 4.0 also boosts adaptability (β = 0.195; p < 0.01), the direct link from adaptability to resilience is negative and significant (β = −0.319; p < 0.01). The hypothesized positive mediation via adaptability is therefore not supported, signaling that continual reconfigurations can dilute core capabilities or add coordination burden in highly digitalized, tightly coupled production environments.

The takeaway for plant leaders and COOs: prioritize fast decision loops, reconfigurable processes, and risk-sensing routines that directly strengthen responsiveness, while treating large-scale redesigns as controlled interventions rather than default responses to uncertainty. The study’s quantifiable mediation pattern provides an evidence-based blueprint for sequencing capability investments under budget and time constraints.

Does customer integration change the payoff from digitalization?

Yes, customer integration is the force multiplier. Firms that tightly coordinate with downstream partners capture larger returns from Industry 4.0 across agility, resilience, and adaptability. The moderation tests show significant interaction effects: I4.0 × customer integration → agility (β = 0.149; p < 0.001), resilience (β = 0.095; p < 0.01), and adaptability (β = 0.139; p < 0.01).

The authors justify focusing on customer integration, not supplier or internal integration, because downstream collaboration most directly enhances market sensing, collaborative planning, and co-creation with end users in data-rich environments. In RBV terms, customer integration is an intangible, hard-to-imitate resource; in DCV terms, it enables continuous realignment of operations with shifting demand signals, ensuring digital tools convert into genuine responsiveness.

Operationally, that means shared data pipelines, joint forecasting, and synchronized fulfillment are not optional extras—they are the connective tissue that turns IoT telemetry and predictive analytics into faster recovery and steadier output when markets whipsaw. The moderation evidence indicates those practices materially steepen the technology-to-capability slope for high-integration firms.

Methodological backbone and contribution

The paper’s moderated mediation model addresses three research questions central to manufacturing resilience: how Industry 4.0 influences resilience; whether agility and adaptability mediate that influence; and how customer integration conditions the effects. By modeling the capability triad together, the study moves beyond siloed analysis and surfaces the context-dependent downside of adaptability in digital settings - a contribution with clear managerial implications.

Measurement rigor is strong: the authors report convergent validity, acceptable fit indices for both measurement and structural models, and standard remedies for common-method bias, supporting confidence in the reported path coefficients and interactions.

What executives should do now

The study recommends:

• Sequence investments toward agility. Prioritize visibility, event-driven planning, and rapid decision architectures that directly lift resilience, before pursuing expansive network reconfigurations.

• Calibrate adaptability. In tightly coupled plants, frequent redesigns can add complexity and erode robustness; treat reconfiguration as targeted, evidence-led change with clear thresholds.

• Institutionalize customer integration. Build joint planning, shared KPIs, and live data exchange with major customers to amplify the returns from digital tools across agility, resilience, and even thoughtfully managed adaptability.