A Novel Model for Assessment of Industry 4.0 Maturity in Defense Industry

Technological developments have led to radical changes in all areas of life. The defense industry is also one of the sectors that experiences these radical changes. Defense qualifications, which have a great proposition on the part of countries’ independence and political powers, require large investments for countries that do not want to have an outsourced defense system. Developed countries have made great strides in this respect, but the changing circumstances have increased their tendency towards defense systems, where technological developments are closely tracked and applied. Within the scope of this research, firstly, the effects of digital transformation on the defense industry are examined. Then, an Industry 4.0 maturity model including five main criteria (strategy, management and organization, human and R&D culture, product and technology, operation) is proposed with a novel multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach called hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (HFAHP). This approach, in which fuzzy logic is used, is chosen to handle the high uncertainties in the structure of the problem. Later, a real-life case study application is conducted in a pioneer company in Turkey. The results of this study show that strategy has the highest importance followed by product and technology, operation, human and R&D culture and management and organization.