Modeling the transformation of the impact of production factors on the economy in the process of smart industry formation

The article identifies the factor of production, associated with smart industrialization, and provides modeling results of the corresponding production function on the example of manufacturing industry in Germany, as a country where the "Industry 4.0" development program has been announced and is being implemented at a nationwide level.It is argued that the existing approaches that takes into account scientific and technological progress within the design of production functions are not suitable for modeling the transformation of the impact of production factors in the process of smart industry formation, since scientific and technological progress in most papers is represented not by a specific measurable indicator, but simply by a natural series of numbers, reflecting the part of the change in production that is not explained by changes in the factors considered. It has been found that in German manufacturing industry output is growing while labor and capital expenditure decreases, which indicates the influence of at least one more factor related to the transition to the new technological mode - the smart industry.The difficulties of assessing the impact of the "smart factor" on production have been identified: both objective (the interdependence of computerization factors and the difficulty of distinguishing the contribution of each of them) and subjective (complete absence or fragmented statistical information). Based on the analysis of statistics, it has been found that the costs of software and databases are the most accurate indicator, reflecting the impact of the computerization factor on the output. A model, that is a modification of the Cobb-Douglas production function, has been designed, in which the added value in the processing industry is used as the endogenous variable, and the number of hours worked (labor factor), the cost of machinery and equipment with a 1 year lag (capital factor) and the cost of software and databases (computerization factor) are the exogenous factors. When analyzing the modeling results, authors found that computerization has turned into an important production factor and demonstrates the potential to replace other factors of production - labor and capital. The model can be used to substantiate the directions of smart industry development at the macro level, as well as the basis for developing criteria for assessing the level of enterprise "smartness" at the micro level.