Industry 4.0: a supply chain innovation perspective

By Gerd J. Hahn. International Journal of Production Research, 2020

335 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution – also known as Industry 4.0 (i4.0) – comprises the digitalisation of the industrial sector. This paper uses the theoretical lens of supply chain innovation (SCI) to investigate the implications of i4.0 on supply chain management. For these purposes, the method of structured content analysis is applied to more than 200 use cases of i4.0-enabled SCI introduced by both established and startup companies. i4.0-enabled SCI manifests along three dimensions: process, technology, and business architecture. The key findings of this study can be summarised as follows: first, i4.0-enabled SCI extends the initial focus on productivity improvements in SC processes towards scalability and flexibility. Second, extant i4.0 solutions rely mostly on analytics and smart things while omitting smart people technology and the human-centric approach associated with the i4.0 paradigm. Third, established companies adopt i4.0 merely to sustain their existing business architectures while startup companies radically change their operating models, relying heavily on data analytics and the platform economy. Consequently, established companies pursue a problem-driven, engineering-based approach to SCI while startup companies follow an ‘asset-light’, business-driven approach. Lastly, there are two distinct approaches to digitalising operational SC processes: platform-based crowdsourcing of standard processes and on-demand provision of customised services.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Information Systems, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/626eec645324903b5b097a4fa4118872cafc6443

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Citations in the corpus

Blockchain adoption in operations and supply chain management: empirical evidence from an emerging economy (2020, background): “Most of these challenges are attributed to the rapid emergence of the information and communication technologies (ICTs), particularly in the Industry 4.0 era (Hahn 2020).”
Artificial intelligence-driven innovation for enhancing supply chain resilience and performance under the effect of supply chain dynamism: an empirical investigation (2021, background): “Notably, supply chain innovation relies heavily on advanced technologies and processes alongside radical changes in product, service, or process that improve efficiency and enhance value delivery to the end customer (Akter et al. 2020; Hahn 2020 ).”