Encyclopedia
What is Industry 4.0?
- Industry 4.0
- smart factory
- digital factory
- digital technologies
- digital economy
Industry 4.0
The concept of Industry 4.0 is often associated with the fourth industrial revolution industrial (Stentoft & Rajkumar, 2020), given the profound implications for the productive paradigm. But what exactly is Industry 4.0? Industry 4.0 emerged in Germany in 2011, with the aim of increasing the competitiveness of German industry (Grabowska, 2020). In short, it applied digital technologies to production, in a close association between economy and digital technology, resulting in innovation through the integration between the real and the virtual world (Cyber-Physical Systems) in industrial activity and production (Ferreira & Serpa, 2018, 2019).
On Industry 4.0:
According to Stentoft and Rajkumar (2020), citing Kagermann, Wahlster, and Helbig (2013, p. 14), Industry 4.0
"involves the technical integration of Cyber-Physical Systems into manufacturing and logistics and the use of the Internet of Things and Services in industrial processes. This will have implications for value creation, business models, downstream services and work organization" (Stentoft & Rajkumar, 2020, p. 2954).
Industry 4.0 (both in the production and in the management processes) is deeply interrelated with technology (Grabowska, 2020). Stentoft and Rajkumar (2020) put forth several technologies related to Industry 4.0 (Table 1).
Table 1. Technologies relating to Industry 4.0
Materials and smart manufacturing technologies
- 3D printing
- 3D scanning
- Robotics
- iBin (intelligent Kanban bin)
- Advanced materials
- Augmented reality and simulation
Smart connecting technologies
- Mobile internet
- Advanced sensors
- Remote control
- Advanced Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) Technology
- Simulation
- Big data
- Digital documentation
- Automatic analysis and visualization of data
- Cloud computing
- Internet of things
Source: Stentoft & Rajkumar, 2020, p. 2955.
The implementation of the Industry 4.0 production paradigm materialises in the “smart factory” (Ferreira & Serpa, 2018), as the “core concept of Industry 4.0, which employs cyber-physical systems to monitor the physical production processes of the factory and make decentralized decision-making possible. Then the physical systems become the Internet of Things, communicating and cooperating both with each other and with humans in real-time via the wireless web” (Lin, Shyu, & Ding, 2017, p. 4).
From the implementation of Industry 4.0, and according to Grabowska’s (2020) proposal, four general categories of emerging new generation factories with different features of their own may be found within the same general framework (Grabowska, 2020) (Table 2).
Table 2. Four types of future smart factories
|
Archetypes of factories of Industry 4.0 |
|
|
1. Intelligent automated and robotic factories |
Responding to the demand for mass products with the implementation of very high production volumes at low costs |
|
2. Digital mass-individualisation factories, otherwise known as customer-centric plants, i.e., customer-focused factories |
Possibility of using predictive maintenance to reduce unplanned downtime |
|
3. E-plants in a box, mobile modular factories, i.e., mobile modular factories |
Real-time tracking and location of the unfinished product has a high level of integration and automation at production sites; factory management is centralised in one main building |
|
4. Handmade production with a digital touch |
Focus on production in the scope of large or medium volumes; however, they enable full personalisation of their products, which makes the products highly individualised through short or very short series, articulating flexibility with productivity |
Source: Adapted from Grabowska (2020).
In general, the implementation of digital technology in production processes, besides having potentialities, also raises deep challenges to be considered. As Hanna (2020) points about several challenges for the development of the digital economy,
“1. Clarifying and prioritizing objectives
2. Securing coherence among assessment tools
3. Addressing poverty, and inequality
4. Attending to process, participation, and partnerships
5. Strengthening country implementation
6. Integrating innovation, and managing risks
7. Integrating digital economy into a country development strategy
8. Promoting local demand and effective use
9. Collaborating across sectors and practices
10. Engaging business” (p. 8).
References
Ferreira, C. M., & Serpa, S. (2018). Society 5.0 and social development: Contributions to a discussion. Management and Organizational Studies, 5(4), 26-31. https://doi.org/10.5430/mos.v5n4p26
Ferreira, C. M., & Serpa, S. (2019). Society 5.0. In Encyclopedia, Vol.1, Available at https://encyclopedia.pub/321
Grabowska, S. (2020). Smart factories in the age of Industry 4.0. Management Systems in Production Engineering, 28(2), 90-96. https://doi.org/10.2478/mspe-2020-0014
Hanna, N. K. (2020). Assessing the digital economy: Aims, frameworks, pilots, results and lessons. Research Square. Preprints. https://doi.org/doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-23091/v1
Lin, K., Shyu, J., & Ding, K. (2017). A cross-strait comparison of innovation policy under Industry 4.0 and sustainability development transition. Sustainability, 9(5), 786. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9050786
Stentoft, J., & Rajkumar, C. (2020) The relevance of Industry 4.0 and its relationship with moving manufacturing out, back and staying at home. International Journal of Production Research, 58(10), 2953-2973. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2019.1660823
Authors:
Carlos Miguel Ferreira
Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – CICS.NOVA, Lisbon; ISCTE – University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal
Sandro Serpa
University of the Azores, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Department of Sociology; Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – CICS.UAc/CICS.NOVA.UAc; Interdisciplinary Centre for Childhood and Adolescence – NICA-Uac, Portugal
