The smart factory as a key construct of industry 4.0: A systematic literature review

Philipp Osterrieder, Lukas Budde and Thomas Friedli

International Journal of Production Economics, 2020, vol. 221, issue C

Abstract: Industry 4.0 is a ubiquitous term throughout general newspapers, on company websites or in scientific journals. One of its key constructs is the smart factory, envisioned as a future state of a fully connected manufacturing system, mainly operating without human force by generating, transferring, receiving and processing necessary data to conduct all required tasks for producing all kinds of goods. Although the understanding of smart factory concepts has been sharpened in the last years, it is still difficult for industrial companies to establish a concrete strategy roadmap within the jungle of different terminologies, ideas and concepts. To generate further clarity and to consolidate the previous findings around smart factory for researchers as well as for practitioner, we conducted a systematic literature review. For this purpose, we chose a five steps approach: Scope definition, topic conceptualisation, literature search, literature analysis and synthesis, and synthesis of future research questions. During our review, we found that research within each perspective is fragmented and unequally advanced. Most publications treat single use cases with low generalizability, often rely upon machine data, typically have a technical nature and seldom incorporate impact estimations. In this paper, our key academic and practical contribution lies in the categorisation of the selected publications into eight thematic distinct perspectives within the sphere of smart factory: Decision making, cyber-physical systems, data handling, IT infrastructure, digital transformation, human machine interaction, IoT, and cloud manufacturing and services. These are further developed into the smart factory research model, stating a foundation for future research endeavors.

Keywords: Smart factory; Smart manufacturing; Industry 4.0; Internet-of-Things; Big data; Literature review (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (52)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925527319302865
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:221:y:2020:i:c:s0925527319302865

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.08.011

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().