The impact of Industry 4.0 technologies on production and supply chains

Abstract: This paper sheds light on the current development in major industrialized countries (such as Germany, Japan, and Switzerland): the trend towards highly-integrated and autonomous production systems. The question is how such a transition of a production infrastructure can take place most efficiently. This research uses the system dynamics method to address this complex transition process from a legacy production system to a modern and highly integrated production system (an Industry 4.0 system). The findings mainly relate to the identification of system structures that are relevant for an Industry 4.0 perspective. Our research is the first in its kind which presents a causal model that addresses the transition to Industry 4.0.