Abstract
As the smart factory concept, a significant element in Industry 4.0, has become more popular, enterprises have tried to keep up with this concept in different ways by adopting different transition strategies. The reason behind this difference might be that enterprises' priorities on these transition strategies become different as their needs change according to their size and technology levels they have. Adaptation of smart factory principles is completely critical process to transition for Industry 4.0 and it should be evaluated in multi-criteria environment. Therefore, in this paper, a decision making (DM) procedure has been suggested to assess smart factory transition strategies for manufacturing plants. To improve the sensitivity and flexibility of the process, the uncertainties of decision making process should be considered. Therefore, in this paper, the proposed multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology consists of cognitive mapping and TOPSIS methods and they are extended based on Z-Numbers fuzzy sets which are able to handle reliability of a DM process in a more effective manner. The proposed method, Z-Numbers fuzzy cognitive mapping, is adopted to model the dependencies among factors having an impact on this transition process whereas the other method, Z-Numbers fuzzy TOPSIS, is utilized to evaluate the alternative transition strategies according to these criteria. Finally, it has been revealed that the alternative strategy, S3-Design and Automation of Processes, is determined as the best strategy for the smart factory transition.