Assessment of researches and case studies on Cloud Manufacturing: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Cloud computing technology has been studied in the context of industry 4.0 as a tool applied to manufacturing services and resources. Such concept is widely known as Cloud Manufacturing. This paper aims at mapping the current state of academic researches on this field, promoting the understanding of trends, references and practical applications in real-life conditions. A bibliometric analysis was conducted using two different databases – Scopus and Web of Sciences – and VOSviewer’s text mining tools and techniques. From a sample of 1,420 papers, this study identified the countries which had the largest volume of publications, the main journals related to the subject, the most influent articles, and four clusters by keywords occurrences: (i) “Optimization of manufacturing processes”, (ii) “Collaborative networks of manufacturing resources and services”, (iii) “Industry 4.0 and cloud computing systems”, and (iv) “Data reliability and cyber-security”. Finally, this work selected and analyzed the 159 articles with applied case studies, in order to stratify and to understand the most common approaches within the four pre-established categories. This article can contribute to researchers and developers searching for successful practical applications in digitalization of manufacturing chains, as well as to those who are looking for gaps in the still unexplored fields of Cloud Manufacturing. Both the assessment and the categorization of the case studies about Cloud Manufacturing is a differential in this article.