4.0 is defined as the integration of digitalization, intelligence, and communication technologies to industrial practices [10]. This new industrial paradigm automates work processes, optimizes products, and allows more granular customer services. Subsequently, a high level of productivity and efficiency is available to enterprises and organizations that embrace Industry 4.0 [11]. It employs innovations and disruptive developments such as IoT, CPS, big data, Fog computing, and virtual reality (VR) to accomplish this transformation. The main idea of Industry 4.0 has drawn on earlier perspectives and concepts and expanded over the years, although its landscape has been significantly altered lately [12].
1.1.2 Future Manufacturing Vision
Industry 4.0 has evolved conventional manufacturing systems a leap forward to smart factories. These advanced manufacturing systems, also termed interconnected factories and digital manufacturing, create smart products and processes. The term “smart” in Industry 4.0 framework is defined as an intelligent environment that offers real-time communication and cooperation of various devices to make decisions and act according to the obtained information [13]. In this manufacturing approach, all the components communicate autonomously, work without human intervention, and trigger operations from customers to suppliers [14]. This allows the creation of a smart environment capable of flexible and adaptive processes, enhances efficiency, and ensures integrated operations meet the requirements of sophisticated markets [5, 13].
In smart factories, the communication between all manufacturing resources is performed through standardized interfaces [15]. Additionally, new business models are introduced to create collaborative environments and better satisfy customers’ changing requirements [16]. Thus, smart products are monitored as an active component of systems and at all stages of life cycle to deliver a high degree of customization. In Figure 1.1, we indicate the architecture of smart manufacturing in Industry 4.0.
Figure 1.1 Smart Factories in Industry 4.0.
1.1.3 Key Features of Industry 4.0
The innovative aspects of Industry 4.0 are expected to affect various industries such as manufacturing, operation companies, and service providers, yet there is no concise knowledge about challenges in its implementation and its implications and consequences. To better achieve this concept, its main features first must be understood. Based on the literature review, the main features of Industry 4.0 could be identified as:
Smart Environment: The central aspect of Industry 4.0 adopts the expansion of intelligent ecosystems that lead to smart products, smart machines, and augmented operators [14]. In this context, smart machines promote independent and self-optimized processes that imply self-organizing production systems. Typically, smart products are self-aware and communicate individually with systems entities [11]. In response to the increasing variegated systems and their distinct requirements, the concept of augmented operators is introduced in Industry 4.0 as Operator 4.0 [17]. This advanced technology evolves the industrial workforce and creates new forms of cooperation among machines, agents, humans, and robots. These radical changes enable smart environments to automatically identify risks or exceptions and continuously require targets to adjust supply chain parameters.
Integration in Supply Chain: A major characteristic of Industry 4.0 is integration that allows accelerated and flexible responses to systems changes. The integration is achieved at different levels of a system and through CPSs to provide system transparency in the value chain. Basically, there are three dimensions of integration, namely, horizontal, vertical, and end-to-end (E2E). Horizontal integration involves the value chain, such as resources, processes, and information flows within a company and among other enterprises [18]; in contrast, vertical integration concerns incorporating various technologies at different hierarchical levels of a company (e.g., from the equipment to the enterprise planning level; Figure 1.1). In fact, vertical integration allows autonomous CPSs to exchange information and trigger actions to build flexible and reconfigurable factories [19]. E2E integration refers to a holistic life cycle management that aims to facilitate true mass customization with lower operational costs and close the gap across the entire value chain (e.g., between product design, development, and customers).
Efficient Supply Chain: Cooperation of diverse technologies with smart equipment and autonomous robots enhance efficiency in Industry 4.0. Given that an individual technology would have a limited impact on the supply chain, the collaboration of these digital technologies in industrial applications brings new possibilities and adds more values. To achieve this vision, visual computing technologies play an important role as facilitator and provide cohesion between technologies to further enhance efficiency [20]. The network configurations are also continuously monitored to ensure optimal fits to business requirements. In short, Industry 4.0 improves the entire value chain and quality of products, strengthens the cooperation of stakeholders, and offers advanced operations that subsequently provide a high level of efficiency in the supply chain.
1.1.4 Key Technologies Enablers for Industry 4.0
Industry 4.0 can be understood as a smart environment that is built by communication networks, automation technology, and production digitalization [21].
This vision succeeds through CPSs, IoT, and Internet of service (IoS) [22]. CPS controls and monitors processes in smart industries, while IoT enables real-time cooperation between every CPS. On the other hand, IoS offers services over the entire value chain in an organization or across companies. In Figure 1.2, we show the technology drivers of Industry 4.0 and briefly explain the key enablers, that is, CPS, IoT, and IoS.
Figure 1.2 Digital Transformation in Industry 4.0.
1.1.4.1 Cyber-Physical Systems
A cyber-physical system is defined as an embedded system that could autonomously exchange information in an intelligent network [23]. These systems link physical elements (machines) and virtual entities (computing) to enable management of interconnected systems. CPS plays an important role in connecting autonomous components and subsystems across manufacturing environments, and it offers vertical and horizontal integration in the systems [24]. The connection of CPSs to the Internet is achieved through an IoT platform [23].
1.1.4.2 Internet of Things
The concept of connected devices is a precursor to IoT and has appeared in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with applications in agriculture, medical sciences, traffic management, and others [25]. After the birth of the Internet, the connection of physical things (e.g., computers) has been fulfilled. Nowadays, the Internet is expanded into the next level and interconnects everyday intelligent objects with each other and environments to exchange data and trigger actions. IoT systems have their foundation in a seamless connection of smart objects and active incorporation within business processes [26].
IoT is a key enabler of Industry 4.0 and realized through the holistic integration of smart equipment, smart systems, and intelligent decision-making in modern industrial systems [27]. This implies the provision of improved products and services using smarter, more reliable, and more autonomous things. The rapid expansion of IoT in industrial applications is called industrial IoT (IIoT) and opens many applications and new frontiers in Industry 4.0 [28].
1.1.4.3 Internet of Service
The
