The Direction of Industry: A Literature Review on Industry 4.0

Abstract

With the rapid success of the digital enterprises in the 21st Century, industrial manufacturing is expected to be approaching the fourth industrial revolution, coined Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The instrumental technology that will drive this evolution is the integration of the physical and digital factory into one cyber physical system. There is consensus among academics and industry alike that there will be an integral paradigm shift in how offerings will be developed and manufactured. While there is much confidence that the future factory will have unprecedented capabilities to satisfy complex customer demands, there is little agreement on how individual organisations can utilise these trends. This paper presents a literature review identifying reoccurring themes and trends of I4.0 and their expected effect on future manufacturing. Central characteristics, challenges and opportunities are identified and discussed. The findings can provide support in developing actionable strategies for industry to direct I4.0 endeavours.

Is Malaysia ready for Industry 4.0? Issues and Challenges in Manufacturing Industry

“…If Malaysian did not break this instinct, changing their mindset to accept this revolution will drag country behinds, other competitors. Routine works will be eliminated in Industry 4.0 era together with the change of working environment into more interesting, the employees' job scope enriched with various competencies and value creation [109]. Employment market should transform into skill-intensive based.…”

Supporting designers: moving from method menagerie to method ecosystem

“…before, as products are becoming more complex and interdisciplinary, companies aim to deliver holistic user experiences based on new business models and the development processes are becoming more global (Nguyen, Müller & Stark 2013;Kimita et al 2015;Eckert et al 2019;Wichmann, Eisenbart & Gericke 2019). For example, Industry 4.0 will require a greater integration between software, hardware and electronics.…”

“…Sensors on the product and its production lines as well as more powerful simulations will generate unprecedented volumes of data. Principles of circularity and sustainability will become commercial and moral imperative (Tukker 2015;Man & Strandhagen 2017;Cong, Zhao & Sutherland 2019;Wichmann et al 2019). All this requires greater transparency in the ways of working and greater collaboration with other fields; and therefore, engagement with their tools and methods and ideally a coordination across different disciplines to assure that gaps and incompatibilities do not cause inefficiencies and product failures.…”

Development of a Potential Model to Support the Assessment and Introduction of Industry 4.0 Technologies

“…Compared to large corporations, there is a lack of both manpower and experience. (Koch et al, 2014) From the extensive literature research according to Wichmann et al (2019), further challenges emerge, such as the fundamental question "How?" the introduction of I4.0 can look like in detail, as well as the initially increasing system and process complexity, which requires a high planning and resource expenditure.…”