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Fourth Industrial Revolution has radically reshaped the production processes in the manufacturing industry. Selected technologies and skills are becoming critical elements to determine the success of a venture. Proper workforce management and preparation is essentials to forecast the end results. Preparing for workforce especially in the labour-intensive industries when most of the human jobs are to be taken over by machines and robotic technologies is a challenging task. The present human workforces must compete amongst themselves on technical, methodological, social and personal competencies to fit well in the automated environment. The workforce in semi-skilled category is predicted to be the most affected and threatened by the implementation of Industry 4.0. Studies on the perspective of readiness and challenges of semi-skilled workforce are still in scarcity. Thus, the purpose of this research is to determine the level of readiness in the implementation of fully automated and smart manufacturing in two perspectives which are automation usage and workers competencies. A total of 191 samples were gathered from the production operators of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Johor. All the variables were analysed using SPSS for descriptive statistics. The findings indicated that the response to the automation suitability, technical competencies and methodology competencies are not yet on par. The result thus recommends an immediate action such as upskilling should be considered and a proper guideline for the preparation of training in technical and new knowledge for the semi-skilled workers should be developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]