The applications of Industry 4.0 technologies in manufacturing context: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) encompasses a plethora of digital technologies effecting on manufacturing enterprises. Most research on this topic examines the effects in the smart factory domain, focusing on production scheduling. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive research on the applications of I4.0 enabling technologies in manufacturing life-cycle processes. This paper is thus intended to provide a systematic literature review answering the following research question: What are the applications of I4.0 enabling technologies in the business processes of manufacturing companies? The study analyses 186 articles and the results show that production scheduling and control is the process most often investigated, while there is also an increasing trend in servitization and circular supply chain management. Moreover, there is extensive combined use of IoT, Big Data Analytics and Cloud, whose applications cover a wide range of processes. On the contrary, other technology like Blockchain is not as widely discussed in the domain of I4.0. This picture calls for a future research agenda extending the scope of investigation into I4.0 in manufacturing. Furthermore, the results of this research can prove extremely useful for practitioners who wish to implement one or more technologies, providing them with solutions for applications in manufacturing.

KEYWORDS:

• Industry 4.0
• manufacturing systems
• advanced manufacturing technology
• manufacturing processes
• smart manufacturing
• literature review

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ting Zheng

Ting Zheng graduated in Industrial Engineering at Tongji University (China) in 2013. He got his M.Sc. degree in Management Engineering at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in 2015. He worked as Process quality engineer and Customer quality engineer at Bosch VHIT S.p.A between 2016 and 2017. Since 2017, he is a member of RISE Laboratory and doctoral student at Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of Università degli Studi di Brescia (Italy). He was also working as a guest scientist at Fraunhofer IAO (Germany) in 2019. His main research interests are primarily related to Industry 4.0, Production and operations management, Digital manufacturing and Logistics 4.0. Email: [email protected]

Marco Ardolino

Marco Ardolino graduated with top marks in Management Engineering in 2013, he obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in 2017. Since January 2017 he is Research Fellow at Università degli Studi di Brescia (Italy). Since 2013 he has carried out research and teaching activities at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of the Università degli Studi di Brescia (Italy), and is a member of the Research Laboratory RISE (Research & Innovation for Smart Enterprises). Within RISE Laboratory he carries out his research on the adoption of digital technologies to support manufacturing companies, in particular for logistics processes. He is also involved in the phenomenon of the servitization of manufacturing companies. Email: [email protected]

Andrea Bacchetti

Andrea Bacchetti is researcher at the University of Brescia (Italy); in 2011 he holds a doctoral degree in Design and Management of Production and Logistic Systems at the same university. His research involves supply chain management, demand forecasting, inventory management and, recently, digital manufacturing. He is member of the Research and Innovation for Smart Enterprises Laboratory (www.rise.it) and he is senior partner at IQ Consulting (www.iqconsulting.it), a spin-off of University of Brescia. He is author of more than 40 scientific publications on international conferences and journals. Email: [email protected]

Marco Perona

Marco Perona is full professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Brescia, Italy (www.unibs.it). He is scientific director of the Research and Innovation for Smart Enterprises (RISE) Laboratory of the University of Brescia (www.rise.it). He is also a founding partner of the academic spin-off IQ Consulting SrL (www.iqconsulting.it). He does research, teaching and transfer activities on operations management, supply chain management, service management and circular economy. He is author of more than 100 scientific publications focusing on these topics, among which 30+ papers in international double-blind referee journals. On the same topics he has led more than 50 transfer projects with medium or large companies, in the manufacturing and services sector. He is member of the Board of Directors at Dantercepies SpA (www.dantercepies.it); IQ Consulting SrL (www.iqconsulting.it) and Partners for Innovation SrL. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering achieved in 1987 at the Polythecnic of Milano. Email: [email protected]