Silva, AgostinhoRabadão, CarlosCapela, CarlosSilva, A.2021-07-292021-07-292020Silva, A; Rabadão, C.; Capela, C. (2020), Towards Industry 4.0 | A case study of BIM Deployment in Ornamental Stones Sector. International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research, Volume 52, No 2, pp 233-250. ISSN: 2307-4531.http://hdl.handle.net/10400.8/5962The transition witnessed from the Third to the Fourth Industrial Age leads to the emergence of paradigms such as BIM, seeking efficiency in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) through a global approach and procurement oriented towards standardized products and I4.0, where production comes to be supported by Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Integrated in the AEC supply chain, the ornamental stone sector shows Portugal to be the eighth country in OS trade worldwide, and the second per capita, with its competitiveness coming from customization BIM represents threats for its business sustainability. Supported by the Service Science, the main objective of this research is to conceptualize an empirical framework, which, when applied to a sample of Ornamental Stone companies, allows a conclusive answer how to keep their competitive advantage of products customization in BIM-standardized procurement environment. By monitoring the entire sequence of events, it was found that the Ornamental Stone companies can retain their main current competitive advantage of customizing their products, which leads us to conclude that Industry 4.0 technologies, appears to respond positively to threat raised from BIM procurement.engOrnamental stonesAECInnovation outcomesOptimizationConstruction industryNatural resourcesjournal article