Towards a Taxonomy of Industrial Challenges and Enabling Technologies in Industry 4.0

TL;DR

This paper develops a taxonomy categorizing industrial challenges and enabling technologies in Industry 4.0, aiming to bridge the gap between academia and industry and facilitate practical application and education.

Contribution

It introduces a novel taxonomy linking challenges and technologies in Industry 4.0, supported by a web platform for practitioners and educators.

Findings

Created a comprehensive taxonomy of Industry 4.0 challenges and technologies

Developed a web platform for matching industrial challenges with solutions

Facilitated knowledge transfer between academia and industry

Abstract

Today, one of the biggest challenges for digital transformation in the Industry 4.0 paradigm is the lack of mutual understanding between the academic and the industrial world. On the one hand, the industry fails to apply new technologies and innovations from scientific research. At the same time, academics struggle to find and focus on real-world applications for their developing technological solutions. Moreover, the increasing complexity of industrial challenges and technologies is widening this hiatus. To reduce this knowledge and communication gap, this article proposes a mixed approach of humanistic and engineering techniques applied to the technological and enterprise fields. The study's results are represented by a taxonomy in which industrial challenges and I4.0-focused technologies are categorized and connected through academic and grey literature analysis. This taxonomy also formed the basis for creating a public web platform where industrial practitioners can identify candidate solutions for an industrial challenge. At the same time, from the educational perspective, the learning procedure can be supported since, through this tool, academics can identify real-world scenarios to integrate digital technologies' teaching process.