# The Use of Mobile Applications for Sustainable Development of SMEs in the Context of Industry 4.0
## 2 Materials and Methods  
### Mobile Application Integration Stages  
To ensure the equal and efficient implementation of new technologies, the so-called \"vertical integration\" should be used, which means ensuring uninterrupted communication and the flow of technological infrastructure used in all processes. A tool for \"vertical integration\" of technologies can be a mobile application that contains a knowledge base for employee training, and accountability, as well as collecting feedback from employees. The need for reporting and feedback is grounded on the need of enterprise management to have an overview of the current situation and to understand how well employees are trained, the level of study materials, and to get the overall picture of the correctness of the redistribution of duties among employees to achieve the expected labor productivity [17; 18]. Feedback from users of the application as well as a group of experts can be collected using tests from IT as well as a general survey using the coefficient of importance of factors and points. The introduction of something new always affects the mental mood of the team and that is why a priority task of managers is to design a learning process to encourage employees to develop themselves and learn something new. To ensure the comfortable adaptation of employees and sustainable management of human resources of the enterprise, it is worth organizing an adaptation plan. Enterprises under Industry 4.0 implementation have to go through a cycle of innovation every time (Figure 2) [19; 20]. The proposed cycle can provide sustainable development of the manufacturing enterprise, due to implementing innovations oriented not only on automating but also on people involved in the manufacturing process. The \"Innovation\" stage of the proposed study lies in using the mobile application as Industry 4.0 tool of vertical integration and a tool for adapting to new technologies. Under implementing new solutions, it is important to explain (Figure 2, \"Motivation\" employees' essence of the changes, their importance for employees and the enterprise, and other changes associated with it, to ensure sustainable personnel management [19; 20; 21]. Using mobile applications is very similar to the M-learning process (mobile learning), where new technologies become a helpful tool for the adaptation process to new technologies [12]. The M-learning process is very simple due to its way of providing information and graphical illustration of the information [22]. The introduction of mobile IT applications in SMEs is associated with a combination of the technology-organization-environment (TOE) structure and is aimed at improving IT innovation and the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies. That is why it is necessary to evaluate the effect of aspects of technology (technology readiness, technology security, and technology integration), or generation (financial commitment, organization readiness,and top management support), and environmental criteria (regulatory support, competitive pressure, and environmental uncertainty) on Industry 4.0 technology application [7]. The mobile application is a tool for implementing technologies of Industry 4.0 and is also a tool for M-learning [22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29]. According to this, there is also another aspect of evaluating such innovation--this is an assessment by the user or relevance for a particular group of users. The enterprise under study has all features of manufacturing SMEs in the Slovak Republic:  
- wide and non-constant range of products,  
- training of personnel on the mentoring method using technical documentation and paper media,  
- under the introduction of an increasing number of automated systems and mechanisms into production,  
- quantity of employees is up to 250,  
- two work shifts,  
- main staff age group range is 25-70 years old,  
- seasonal employees are hired with an increase in the number and volume of orders.