Mapping the concept of the industry 4.0 production system

The production function is that part of an organization, concerned with the transformation of a range of inputs into the required outputs (products) having the requisite quality level. Currently the challenges facing production are greater than ever before, as automation and data exchange in production technologies facilitate dealing with complexity and improve productivity.

This paper aims to explore the preferable manner for visualizing the concept of Industry 4.0, a complex concept which often is not clear with respect to what it means for businesses, although, it advocates more productive systems, both in service systems and manufacturing environments. Industry 4.0 concerns a profound digital transformation and may have driving changes on annual revenues increases and cost reductions.

A method for visualizing complex concepts and communicating complex ideas is concept mapping. Concept maps are a visualization tool for organizing and representing knowledge and help us to organize, represent, and better understand complex concepts and information. They are a graphical two-dimensional display of concepts (usually represented within boxes or circles), connected by directed arcs, encoding brief relationships between pairs of concepts using linking words or phrases, forming meaningful statements (propositions). The meaning of concepts derives from the totality of propositions linked to any given concept.

The study, through a literature review, will identify key concepts within the subject of Industry 4.0. These concepts will be used to propose a conceptual framework that sets out the fundamental concepts of Industry 4.0 and to construct a concept map that helps businesses to map out their Industry 4.0 strategy.

This article describes the use of concept mapping to construct a conceptual framework, incorporating sources from literature, but the structure and the overall coherence of the framework in the context of Industry 4.0, is a key part of author’s design.The proposed concept map shall increase the understanding of operation/manufacturing managers in implementing Industry 4.0 principles, for improved productivity and more sustainable production and to gain a competitive advantage. The concept map will be created using the software tool CmapTools which is available for free.

Further research is needed to structure a more comprehensive framework and to identify the concepts that describe the Industry 4.0 environment in a more thorough
manner.