Past, present and future of Industry 4.0—A systematic literature review and research agenda proposal
Abstract
Over the last few years, the fourth industrial revolution has attracted more and more attentions all around the world. In the current literature, there is still a lack of efforts to systematically review the state of the art of this new industrial revolution wave. The aim of this study is to address this gap by investigating the academic progresses in Industry 4.0. A systematic literature review was carried out to analyse the academic articles within the Industry 4.0 topic that were published online until the end of June 2016. In this paper, the obtained results from both the general data analysis of included papers (e.g. relevant journals, their subject areas and categories, conferences, keywords) and the specific data analysis corresponding to four research sub-questions are illustrated and discussed. These results not only summarise the current research activities (e.g. main research directions, applied standards, employed software and hardware), but also indicate existing deficiencies and potential research directions through proposing a research agenda. Findings of this review can be used as the basis for future research in Industry 4.0 and related topics.
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In an analysis of 224 related papers, 'data' appeared 229 times as part of the 25 most frequent words related to Industry 4.0.
“Studies by Liao et al., (2017) show that 'data' appeared 229 times as part of the 25 most frequent words related to Industry 4.0, when 224 related papers were analyzed [28].”
From Digitisation and the Circular Economy: A Review of Current Research and Future Trends (2018) · cites this paper as [28]
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“[Figure 1 about here] For this work, we performed Systematic Literature Review (SLR) (Biel and Glock, 2016; Papadopoulos et al., 2016; Liao et al., 2017).”
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- Authors
- Liao, Y., Deschamps, F., Loures, E. D. F. R., & Ramos, L. F. P.
- Affiliations
- Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (BR)
- Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (BR)
- Corresponding author
- Liao, Yongxin
- Venue
- International Journal of Production Research
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-03-28
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 3609-3629
- ISSN
- 0020-7543 (ISSN-L)
- 1366-588X
- OpenAlex
- W2603008685
- Cited by
- 2,036
- References
- 48
- Citations by year
- 2026: 108 · 2025: 144 · 2024: 177 · 2023: 261 · 2022: 278 · 2021: 365 · 2020: 315 · 2019: 249 · 2018: 126 · 2017: 12 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 22.97
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Journal of Production Research (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personal
- Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering › Digital Transformation in Industry
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Impact of AI and Big Data on Business and Society
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering › Flexible and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems
- Keywords
- Industry 4.0, Fourth Industrial Revolution, research agenda, research directions, research gaps
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