  This paper sheds light on the current development in major industrialized
countries (such as Germany, Japan, and Switzerland): the trend towards
highly-integrated and autonomous production systems. The question is how such a
transition of a production infrastructure can take place most efficiently. This
research uses the system dynamics method to address this complex transition
process from a legacy production system to a modern and highly integrated
production system (an Industry 4.0 system). The findings mainly relate to the
identification of system structures that are relevant for an Industry 4.0
perspective. Our research is the first in its kind which presents a causal
model that addresses the transition to Industry 4.0.
