Abstract
The rail sector has been in a steady decline, resulting from a lack of maintenance, mismanagement, aging infrastructure, theft and vandalism, and community-related issues such as litter on the railway line. This has resulted in a massive loss of revenue and employment opportunities to address the inequalities of this country. Developed countries have embraced digitalization technologies known as “Railway 4.0” to metamorphose their traditional railways by improving the infrastructure, operational, and transportation systems. However, the rail sector in growing economies like South Africa is still battling to keep pace with the adoption of these technological developments.
Due to limited literature evidence that suggests the South African rail sector is adopting Railway 4.0 technologies, the purpose of this study was to assess the awareness levels and determine the determinants influencing the endorsement of Railway 4.0 innovations in the South African rail sector. The study adopted a quantitative research approach with the positivist paradigm. The descriptive research design was undertaken, using an online survey (i.e., created using the Microsoft platform) which was distributed to a target of 50-100 rail professionals, including engineers, technicians, project managers, and engineering managers.
The raw data was analysed utilising both descriptive and exploratory factor analysis techniques. Although, the research questions are descriptive in nature, the results incorporated the explanatory insights into the factors that impact Railway 4.0 adoption. Additionally, the mean item score (MIS) technique was used to rank the awareness levels of the innovations. The findings revealed that the participants are highly aware of Railway 4.0 innovations (90.91%), and the Internet of Things (IoT) accrued the highest awareness levels (MIS of 3.32) among other technologies. The factory analysis revealed that there are 7 critical underlying components accounting for 73.542% of the cumulative variance. These include market and policy regulation, lack of managerial support, lack of technical capability and standardization, reliability and complexity, resistance to change and policy support, organisational culture and structure, and unrealised relative advantages.
The research findings suggests that extensive efforts could be placed in implementing supportive policies, rehabilitation and upgrading of the existing deteriorating infrastructure, provision of digital training to employees and the reinforcement of effective communication practices within the organisation to facilitate adoption of digitalisation in South Africa. Additionally, adopting collaborative and marketing strategies may contribute to improving the awareness levels of Railway 4.0 innovations among the rail professionals.