An Industry 4.0 framework, showing every possible action towards the complete digitalization of a company both considering strategic and technological aspects, is proposed. The state of the art analysis and re-elaboration allows to coherently integrating many valuable but scattered and narrow contributions into a holistic view covering the following dimensions: value drivers, levers of action, processes and enabling technologies. Based on this framework the consequences of digitalization in shaping a new working environment are analyzed focusing on workforce impact, looking at the modification of both performed tasks and required competences as well as to more generic social consequences (job satisfaction, work-life balance, new forms of employment). To support the application of the proposed roadmap a Digitalization Maturity Model is developed to assess the state of a company journey towards Industry 4.0 considering the following dimensions: Strategy, Processes, Technologies, Products & Services and People.

Collaborative robotics possesses the potential to revolutionise industrial automation by offering affordable and accessible solutions with reasonable skill requirements. However, identifying the most valuable and appropriate applications for this technology remains a challenge. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review to analyse the existing collaborative robotics applications, and the results showed that only a limited number of applications can be considered true collaboration, with even fewer classified as intelligent collaboration. The study comprised a survey designed to offer valuable insights to not only enhance the state-of-the-art analysis in the identification of existing challenges in the field of collaborative robotics but also to provide motivation to guide future advancements. By leveraging the survey results, researchers and practitioners will be better equipped to navigate the complex landscape of collaborative robotics and develop innovative solutions to tackle the identified challenges. This study also informs on the latest research and development in the field.

The integration of IoT infrastructures across production systems, together with the extensive digitalisation of industrial processes, are drastically impacting manufacturing value chains and the business models built on the top of them. By exploiting these capabilities companies are evolving the nature of their businesses shifting value proposition towards models relying on product servitization and share, instead of ownership. In this paper, we describe the semantic data-model developed to support a digital platform fostering the reintroduction in the loop and optimization of unused industrial capacity. Such data-model aims to establish the main propositions of the semantic representation that constitutes the essential nature of the ecosystem to depict their interactions, the flow of resources and exchange of production services. The inference reasoning on the semantic representation of the ecosystem allows to make emerge nontrivial and previously unknown opportunities. This will apply not only to the matching of demand and supply of manufacturing services, but to possible and unpredictable relations. For instance, a particular kind of waste being produced at an ecosystem node can be linked to the requirements for an input material needed in a new product being developed on the platform, or new technologies can be suggested to enhance processes under improvement. The overall architecture and individual ontologies are presented and their usefulness is motivated via the application to use cases.

Manufacturing companies continuously face the challenge of improving their sustainability profile, but one of the major problems with sustainability-centred business approaches relates to the simultaneous pursuit of private and public (society and environment) benefits. Industrial symbiosis (IS) can be a powerful answer to these approaches: IS can lead companies to virtuous behaviours coupling environmental (public) benefits with economic (private) performances. IS projects opportunities are amplified for companies belonging to industrial parks or agglomeration since they are usually proner to embrace collaborative paths and stream exchange chances are wider. Still data show that IS is really limited to more farsighted companies. The proposed study is centred on the analysis of an industrial survey performed by the authors, aiming at investigating the barriers to the adoption of symbiotic behaviours. This investigation points out the opportunities for companies in an industrial agglomeration towards the creation of IS interactions.

The sharing economy emerged in recent years as a model disrupting the approach to traditional B2B and B2C value chains by giving access to underutilized resources at a fraction of the cost to whom cannot or do not want to buy new products. In this context, multi-sided platforms (MSPs) play the pivotal role of providing the environments and the technological infrastructures able to match make the needs of manifold user insisting on them. The manufacturing sector didn't remain untouched by this trend, but still struggle to set up the value drivers supporting companies in the change. How can companies move towards new business models based on MSPs? How can they be supported in the value creation by the platforms? Aim of the proposed study is to present a MSP platform and related ecosystem for the automation sector, designing its business model and analyzing the tackled limitations and potential improvements. The selected case study brought to the definition of a methodological approach to MSP business model design based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the dynamics ruling the platform ecosystem, combing a static conceptualization of the MSP business model canvas with an agent-based simulation model, for capturing and emulating the behavior of the MSP stakeholders with the purpose to validate the sustainability of the platform ecosystem.