Collaborative engineering is not a new subject but it assumes a new importance in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0). There are other concepts frequently mismatched with collaboration. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to put forward a collaborative engineering concept, along its sub concepts, supported by an extensive systematic literature review. A critical analysis and discussion about the fundamental importance of learning, and the central human role in collaboration, in the I4.0, is presented, based on the main insights brought through the literature review. This study also enables to realize about the importance of collaboration in the current digitalization era, along with the importance of recent approaches and technology for enabling or promoting collaboration. Main current practices of human centered and autonomous machine-machine approaches and applications of collaboration in engineering, namely in manufacturing and management, are presented, along with main difficulties and further open research opportunities on collaboration..

Collaboration in the digitalization era is of utmost importance, as it enables sustainable development in the Industry 4.0 (I4.0) context. In this paper, a general view over different approaches and application scenarios of collaboration, along with I4.0-oriented technology that has been put forward is explored, based on a systematic literature review. As a result, it was possible to realize that the wide worldwide portfolio of contributions in the literature can be grouped in seven main clusters, which, in turn, are further synthesized through a proposed framework including three main blocks about models, tools, and business approaches about collaborative manufacturing and management in I4.0. It was also possible to recognize that learning, and further, co-learning are key issues correlating collaboration with I4.0, along with the human factor, which assumes a central role in linking these two domains, which combined, are of utmost importance to enable companies to reach a sustainable development in the current digitalization era. Future open research questions should be explored in order to further analyse industrial understandings on the importance of the underlying communication, learning, and collaboration approaches, along with supporting methods, means, and tools, to properly approach collaboration issues in I4.0, for promoting sustainable development of companies.

NON-TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: CURRENT ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES