# Evaluating the Degree of Uncertainty of Research Activities in Industry 4.0
## 4 Methodology  
The literature offers different studies on the subject concerning the activities of research and development in advanced countries, such as the UK and Germany [17], while it is less advanced in Italy. This is due to the uncertainty of these activities and because of a certain cultural background which makes it difficult to implement Industry 4.0 in Italy, as opposed to other countries, such as Germany. Offering a method to reduce the degree of uncertainty can be an incentive in an economy such as the Italian one. The present work explored the degree of uncertainty that emerged during the R&D activities conducted by a set of Italian firms (Figure 1), mainly related to the manufacturing industry [9] and most of which were located in northern Italy. These firms considered as positive the benefits offered by the National Enterprise Plan 4.0, namely, the tax credits. Data collection occurred over a period of two years (2016-2018), during which 190 projects were analyzed. The analysis was carried out at two levels:  
1. Direct survey with the entrepreneur and the internal research team (always being projects of a corporate nature and industrial development);
2. A technical analysis of the documentation supporting the project idea. The two analysis thresholds were the starting point for the compilation of the positioning grid from which the uncertainty graph was generated. The approach used measured the degree of uncertainty of each research project. The temporal dimension marks four phases: conception, conceptualization, design, and prototyping. The uncertainties of a project have an evolution consistent with that indicated and known in the bibliography as a \"cone of uncertainty\" [75; 76]. The phenomenon known as the \"cone of uncertainty\" is determined by the tendency of estimates to be quite imprecise in a specific part of a project. At the beginning of a project there is still limited information about the scope, the specifications of the various deliverables, and the resources involved. As a result, time and cost and the overall effort are rather vague. Therefore, a planning phase is needed that will help to explain all these aspects and to build the project plan. As the project progresses and passes from the planning phase to the implementation phase,  
Figure 1: Geographic distribution of firms selected by region in Italy (in % terms). more and more precise information is acquired and, therefore, the cone of uncertainty is reduced as illustrated in Figure 2. The horizontal axis represents time and on it are represented the various phases that a project goes through from the beginning to the completion of the work (the terms used refer to a software development project, but the phenomenon concerns all types of projects). The vertical axis represents the margin of error in the estimates. This margin is usually significantly reduced after one-third of the time has elapsed since the start of the project. Of course, this trend is not only linked to time but also to the ability to use that time to collect information. If this does not happen, a cloud of uncertainty is generated that envelops the project to the end as in the adjacent representation [37; 38; 39; 40; 41]. The cone of uncertainty is reduced only through a decision-making process that gradually eliminates variability. By deciding what should be done and what should not be done, defining the resources that will be used, and defining the expected quality level and the budget allocated, the variability of the estimates is reduced and allows to manage the next phase of implementation. During the work, the data related to the progress of the project will permit to make other decisions aimed at further reducing the margins of variation. Figure 2: _Cont._  
The cone of uncertainty can have significant effects especially in large projects, so it may be important to wait for a detailed analysis to be carried out before making binding commitments in the face of information that has not yet been sufficiently verified.