Production scheduling in the context of Industry 4.0: review and trends

Abstract

Notwithstanding its disruptive potential, which has been the object of considerable debate, Industry4.0 (I4.0) operationalisation still needs significant study. Specifically, scheduling is a key process that should be explored from this perspective. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the issues regarding scheduling that need to be considered in the new I4.0 framework. To achieve this, a two-stage cascade literature review is performed. The review begins with an analysis regarding the opportunities and challenges brought by I4.0 to the scheduling field, outputting a set of critical scheduling areas (CSA) in which development is essential. The second-stage literature review is performed to understand which steps have been taken so far by previous research in the scheduling field to address those challenges. Thus, a first contribution of this work is to provide insight on the influence and expected changes brought by I4.0 to scheduling, while showcasing relevant research. Another contribution is to identify the most promising future lines of research in this field, in which relevant challenges such as holistic scheduling, or increased flexibility requirements are highlighted. Concurrently, CSA such as decentralised decision-making, and human–robot collaboration display large gaps between current practice and the required technological level of development.

Keywords:

• scheduling
• production planning
• Industry 4.0
• industry challenges
• two-stage literature review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Manuel Parente http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5765-2622

Gonçalo Figueira http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6696-824X

Pedro Amorim http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7857-3405

Alexandra Marques http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5791-8723

Additional information

Funding

This work is financed by the ERDF – European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation – COMPETE 2020 Programme, and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, within project SAICTPAC/0034/2015- POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016418.