Abstract
The whole world is moving to Industry 4.0. The local and international industry will soon require
university engineering graduates to come on board fully acquainted and competent with relevant
Industry 4.0 skill sets to add value immediately to the enterprise. Laboratories should be the breeding
space for innovative minds to add significant value to the immediate socio-economy. The BEng-Tech
Industrial Engineering laboratory plays a substantial role in developing employability skills in
students and has the potential to develop Industry 4.0 competencies necessary for future employment
and enterprises. To realise this potential, engineering laboratories should adapt to rapid technological
changes to keep laboratory equipment relevant. Current laboratory settings require physical access
during fixed periods. In addition, the current laboratory designs do not enable interdisciplinary
research cooperation and sharing of laboratory resources. Budgetary and space constraints hinder
many labs from procuring the desired laboratory equipment.
A BEng-Tech Industrial Engineering laboratory from a selected university in Johannesburg is not
spared from the challenges other universities face. These challenges call for strategies to assist
universities when designing and building Industry 4.0 compliant laboratories. To achieve this
objective, this research adopted a case study approach to determine the current Industry 4.0 compliant
state. The Industry 4.0 readiness level assessment tool for laboratories was successfully developed and
implemented in the BEng-Tech IE laboratory at the selected university. The results from the Industry
4.0 readiness level assessment tool revealed that the university’s BEng-Tech IE laboratory lacks
enough management systems. Therefore, it scored Industry 4.0 readiness level (I4RL) 3 at a total
I4RL percentage of 50%. This research presented a migration framework to help laboratory
developers in BEngTech programmes transition their laboratories to Industry 4.0 compliant state.
Furthermore, the framework is implemented in conjunction with the I4RL results and serves as a
guideline to transition the laboratory from any I4RL to I4RL 6. Furthermore, this migration
framework provides laboratory developers with a guideline on integrating the data, hardware and
software using the vertical integration of the ISA 95 standards. The framework has the potential to
address the lack of empirical Industry 4.0 readiness-level assessment tools in developing laboratories.