Industry 4.0 and Sustainability -A study on Malaysian MSC Status Companies

The study investigates the core determinants of Industry 4.0 and its effective accomplishment, leading to the three dimensions of sustainability. A large number of Malaysian organizations are preparing to implement and launch Industry 4.0, and the government is also concerned to assist them. However, since the integration model of Industry 4.0 and sustainability are missing, most organizations do not have a clear deployment strategy, and the situation is highly essential for Malaysia. Nevertheless, the general theoretical structure with the investigation of Industry 4.0 determinants leading to sustainability also remains unclear. Therefore, this research expects to examine six key variables crucial for Industry 4.0 execution towards achieving sustainability, including Technology, IT Infrastructure, Top Management Commitment, Skilled Human Resource, Organizational Readiness, and Role of Government. This study will employ the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) and the Smart Partial Least Square (PLS) for the data analysis and Simple Random Sampling for data collection. The MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) status companies are the population, and this study will send the questionnaire to 1,800 companies to obtain a minimum of 350 responses. This study proposes skilled human resources as a new variable and the successful implementation of Industry 4.0 as a mediating variable that will broaden the concept of Industry 4.0 and sustainability. Additionally, the theoretical integration of the study will assist government agencies, policy-makers, and practitioners in evaluating and performing their strategies in achieving sustainable development goals through implementing Industry 4.0 successfully.