Industry 4.0: current trend and future scope for further research in High Performance Manufacturing

Published in: Engineering, Integration, and Alliances for a Sustainable Development. Hemispheric Cooperation for Competitiveness and Prosperity on a Knowledge-Based Economy: Proceedings of the 18th LACCEI International Multi-Conference for Engineering, Education and Technology
Date of Conference: July 27-31, 2020
Location of Conference: Virtual
Authors: Mario Roberto Acevedo Amaya (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras - UNAH, HN)
Cesar Humberto Ortega-Jimenez (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras - UNAH, HN)
Jose Antonio Dominguez Machuca (Universidad de Sevilla, ES)
Rafaela Alfalla-Luque (Universidad de Sevilla, ES)
Full Paper: #303

Abstract:

The fourth industrial revolution requires that personalization processes of mass productions evolve towards flexible, interconnected, cloud production with greater automation in its machines and operations, called Industry 4.0 (I4.0). However, a homogeneous I4.0 concept, infrastructure state, and other issues are still scarce, making difficult to determinate in the specialized literature, the threshold between recent manufacturing and challenges that companies had to reach competitive advantage through I4.0 inclusion. Despite becoming one of the most popular strategies for continuous improvement, many plants are struggling to turn I4.0 into a success. Therefore, this paper analyzes the current trends of Industry 4.0 in High Performance Manufacturing (HPM), aiming to consolidate the existing knowledge on both subjects, providing a starting point for researchers and practitioners seeking to implement I4.0 in plants and offering suggestions for future research. This systematic literature review aims to synthesize, organize and structure the stock of knowledge relating to I4.0 and HPM. The results show that HPM papers do not evidence a holistic evaluation of I.40 principles and foundations. There exists in HPM literature manufacturing practices that permit evaluate technology inclusion and their performance but not their autonomy, cloud computing and network between machines, supplier and processes. The HPM papers trends are related with issues such as adaptability, flexibility, reconfigurability, new information technologies, modularity, automation, etc. Regarding research limitations, it is necessary to study current I4.0 adoption level, technological infrastructure and cultural factors. The practical implications of this research are focused in the identification of manufacturing practices used in specialized literature to measure how technology inclusion increase companies’ performance, proving the technological infrastructure and I4.0 maturity level. The originality of this paper converges on the presentation of some manufacturing practices applied on HPM research which are associated with I4.0.