Background: Due to changing market requirements and customer demands, companies are now driven ever more to increase collaboration throughout their supply chains. There are new technologies being discovered and developed every day, providing many new solutions to increase their competitiveness. The fourth industrial revolution, also known as industry 4.0 has brought up technologies that have enabled the integration of information technologies within processes. The adoption of industry 4.0 comes with many challenges whilst incorporating it within an organization.  

Purpose: This thesis identifies the several challenges faced whilst adopting industry 4.0 in pharmaceuticals and analyzes how the current processes have to be modified in order to achieve a successful adoption of industry 4.0 throughout an organization. Moreover, this thesis will analyze and discuss the different effects that the adoption of industry 4.0 brings along on the sustainability of an organization.  

Method: This thesis conducts a singular case study within Johnson and Johnson (Sweden) where qualitative data is gathered based on semi-structured interviews, observations and grounded on a literature review.  

Findings and Conclusions: 

 The challenges identified throughout the study were the lack of talent in the market, the investments required, as well as the current IT infrastructure requiring to be changed or upgraded. Sustainability is affected from two aspects mainly, which are the economic and environmental aspects. Industry 4.0 brings the opportunity for economic gains and emissions can be reduced through the data collected from processes, but on the downside having more IT infrastructure will cause emissions to rise in that domain.