Industry 4.0: current trend and future scope for further research in High Performance Manufacturing

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution requires that personalization processes of mass productions evolve towards flexible, interconnected, cloud production with greater automation in its machines and operations, called Industry 4.0 (I4.0). However, a homogeneous I4.0 concept, infrastructure state, and other issues are still scarce, making difficult to determinate in the specialized literature, the threshold between recent manufacturing and challenges that companies had to reach competitive advantage through I4.0 inclusion. Despite becoming one of the most popular strategies for continuous improvement, many plants are struggling to turn I4.0 into a success. Therefore, this paper analyzes the current trends of Industry 4.0 in High Performance Manufacturing (HPM), aiming to consolidate the existing knowledge on both subjects, providing a starting point for academics and practitioners seeking to implement I4.0 in plants and offering suggestions for future examination. This systematic literature review aims to synthesize, organize, and structure the stock of knowledge relating to I4.0 and HPM. The results show that HPM papers do not evidence a holistic evaluation of I.40 principles and foundations. There exists in HPM literature manufacturing practices that permit evaluate technology inclusion and their performance but not their autonomy, cloud computing and network between machines, supplier, and processes. The HPM papers trends are related with issues such as adaptability, flexibility, reconfigurability, new information technologies, modularity, automation, etc. Regarding study limitations, it is necessary to study current I4.0 adoption level, technological infrastructure, and cultural factors. The practical implications are focused in the identification of manufacturing practices used in specialized literature to measure how technology inclusion increase companies' performance, proving the technological infrastructure and I4.0 maturity level. The originality of this paper converges on the presentation of some manufacturing practices applied on HPM studies which are associated with I4.0.

Reconfigurability for higher supply chain performance

“…On the other hand, implementing a reconfigurable supply chain can require investments in technology and training so that the implementation costs would be higher. [31] These are the high costs necessary to improve or change machinery and equipment, adjust interfaces, invest in new technologies and equipment that are integrated, and accelerate manufacturing reconfigurability of processes following market demands.…”

The adoption of sustainability practices in manufacturing: barriers, drivers, enablers, and impact

“…The three industries integrating the database have been chosen because they are in continuous transition and face intense global competition . They include a large number of plants around the world and face different competitive environments and competitive conditions (Acevedo Amaya et al, 2020;. The information collected by the HPM project is cross-sectional by nature providing comparable and consistent cross-country/cross-industry information on different operation management areas.…”

“…While the idea of integration is critical and challenging, the HPM project aimed "to set a new standard for the way manufacturing practices are viewed in today´s world" . Accordingly, it considers variety of operation programs such as Lean Manufacturing, Technology Management, Total Quality Management, Information Systems and others, with the hypothesis that leveraging of these practices should lead to superior performance for manufacturing firms (Acevedo Amaya et al, 2020). Hence, it allows researchers to develop numerous hypotheses on performance causes and effect studies (Okoshi et al, 2019).…”