To adapt existing structures to the requirements of Industry 4.0, 26% of German companies rely on working groups created within their own IT departments, while 4% establish competence groups outside their IT department. These were the findings of a survey of about 600 companies conducted by the industry association Bitkom. This shows a significant increase compared to 2016; the corresponding percentages were 20% and 2% at the time. 69% of companies nevertheless have no associated organizational unit (2016: 77%). The survey also found that the smaller the company, the lower the likelihood that it has an in-house digitization team. While 74% of small (20 to 99 employees) and 61% of mid-sized (100 to 499 employees) companies do not have a corresponding team, only 24% of the big companies do without one.

Only one in ten German companies entrusts a special executive such as a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) with managing their digital transformation. This also differs depending on company size: while 44% of large companies have created such a position, SMEs (24%) and above all small businesses (6%) lag far behind. Despite this partial need to catch up, however, signs are pointing to digitization for German industry as a whole: according to a study by Staufen AG , the proportion of companies that have already implemented concrete Industry 4.0 projects recently exceeded the 50% mark for the first time.