Industry 4.0: Challenges and success factors for adopting digital technologies in airports

With the advent of Industry 4.0 technologies in the last decade, airports have undergone digitalisation to capitalise on the purported benefits of these technologies such as improved operational efficiency and passenger experience. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with emergence of its variants (e.g. Delta, Omicron) has exacerbated the need for airports to adopt new technologies such as contactless and robotic technologies to facilitate travel during this pandemic. However, there is limited knowledge of recent challenges and success factors for adoption of digital technologies in airports. Therefore, through an industry survey of airport operators and managers around the world (n=102, 0.754<Composite Reliability<0.892; conducted during COVID-19), this study identifies the challenges faced in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies (n=20) as well as enhances understanding of best practices or success factors that supported technology adoption in airports. The widely used technology, organisation, environment (TOE) framework is used as a theoretically basis for the quantitative part of the questionnaire. A complementary qualitative part is used to underpin and extend the findings. The industry survey is the first-of-its-kind that was conducted to understand the implementation challenges that airport operators face in adopting Industry 4.0 technologies in the airport. The survey results have shown that that the Industry 4.0 technologies were not implemented to a similar extent in airports despite the generic challenges that were faced in adopting the various Industry 4.0 technologies in the airport.

Adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in airports -- A systematic literature review

Airports have been constantly evolving and adopting digital technologies to improve operational efficiency, enhance passenger experience, generate ancillary revenues and boost capacity from existing infrastructure. The COVID-19 pandemic has also challenged airports and aviation stakeholders alike to adapt and manage new operational challenges such as facilitating a contactless travel experience and ensuring business continuity. Digitalisation using Industry 4.0 technologies offers opportunities for airports to address short-term challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic while also preparing for future long-term challenges that ensue the crisis. Through a systematic literature review of 102 relevant articles, we discuss the current state of adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in airports, the associated challenges as well as future research directions. The results of this review suggest that the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies is slowly gaining traction within the airport environment, and shall continue to remain relevant in the digital transformation journeys in developing future airports.