Logistics: Impact of Industry 4.0

Abstract

The term “Industry 4.0” relates broadly to intelligent digitization, products, and value chain processes automation, an integration of real and virtual manufacturing worlds where products, factories, humans, and objects merge with embedded software in intelligent, distributed systems. The fourth industrial revolution currently encompasses many examples of application in several fields ranging from health to industry. However, despite this recent interest, the emergence of digitalization in the logistics industry has received little attention, especially in light of the fact that digitization is of increasing strategic importance for companies in a changing and highly competitive environment as it impacts their established processes, business models, and sector boundaries while also having an ecological impact. The new trade strategies put forward by the United Nations in their development plan revolve around sustainability, especially in the industrial sector. Technological advances related to the fourth industrial revolution represent the best approach to ensure sustainability, especially if these technologies are applied to the Logistics 4.0 paradigm within manufacturing companies. The focus of our research method, solely based on a bibliography study over a span of the last five years, is on the digitalization of manufacturing companies, while our selection of screened paper is based on a qualitative criterion further discussed in this paper. The purpose of this paper is to first shed light on the link between the last industrial revolution and its impact on the evolution of logistics and then to present the various optimization opportunities and risks, with a focus on efficiency performance.