Driven by the ongoing migration towards Industry 4.0, the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has empowered smart manufacturing and digital transformation. AI enhances the migration towards industry 4.0 through AI-based decision-making by analyzing real-time data to optimize different processes such as production planning, predictive maintenance, quality control etc., thus guaranteeing reduced costs, high precision, efficiency and accuracy. This paper explores AI-driven smart manufacturing, revolutionizing traditional approaches and unlocking new possibilities throughout the major phases of the industrial equipment lifecycle. Through a comprehensive review, we delve into a wide range of AI techniques employed to tackle challenges such as optimizing process control, machining parameters, facilitating decision-making, and elevating maintenance strategies within the major phases of an industrial equipment lifecycle. These phases encompass design, manufacturing, maintenance, and recycling/retrofitting. As reported in the 2022 McKinsey Global Survey (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai-in-2022-and-a-half-decade-in-review), the adoption of AI has witnessed more than a two-fold increase since 2017. This has contributed to an increase in AI research within the last six years. Therefore, from a meticulous search of relevant electronic databases, we carefully selected and synthesized 42 articles spanning from 01 January 2017 to 20 May 2023 to highlight and review the most recent research, adhering to specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, and shedding light on the latest trends and popular AI techniques adopted by researchers. This includes AI techniques such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), Bayesian Networks, Support Vector Machines (SVM) etc., which are extensively discussed in this paper. Additionally, we provide insights into the advantages (e.g., enhanced decision making) and challenges (e.g., AI integration with legacy systems due to technical complexities and compatibilities) of integrating AI across the major stages of industrial equipment operations. Strategically implementing AI techniques in each phase enables industries to achieve enhanced productivity, improved product quality, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability. This exploration of the potential of AI in smart manufacturing fosters agile and resilient processes, keeping industries at the forefront of technological advancements and harnessing the full potential of AI-driven solutions to improve manufacturing processes and products.

The enterprises to be competitive are constantly looking for continuous increase of productivity, quality and level of services. With the development of Industry 4.0 concept, manufacturers are more confident about new advantages of automation and systems integration. Lean management is well developed and empirically proven effective managerial approach. Combining Lean and Industry 4.0 practices seems to be necessary evolutionary step for further raise the level of operational excellence (exploitation of finance, workload, materials, machines/devices). There is an increasing number of Industry 4.0 solutions used to reduce waste (as known from Lean Management). Therefore, the main objective of this article aims at presenting the results of a literature review on the concept of ‘Lean Industry 4.0’. Dynamic methodology called ‘Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)’ was used. It combines the Systematic Literature Review approach with the quantitative analysis of bibliographic networks to detect emerging topics and the dynamic evolution of the topics. The paper is a comprehensive systematization and rationalization of knowledge about the integration of LM and I4.0 concepts, identifies the most important research trends and defines directions for future research. The article contains a framework that presents the current state of knowledge in the area of Lean Industry 4.0. Keywords: bibliometrics, Industry 4.0, lean management, lean manufacturing, systematic literature network analysis

Manufacturing execution systems play an important role of bridging high-level enterprise functions and production or manufacturing operations. The embedded systems are usually in charge of controlling execution of the operations. Modern embedded systems have become capable of simultaneous and deterministic execution of control algorithms and IP-based communication, making it possible to create complex cyber-physical systems (CPSs), where the computational and communication resources of a device can be used directly for various control, supervisory, or monitoring functions. The complexity for defining open-knowledge-driven manufacturing execution system (OKD-MES) is in maintaining awareness of overall system state to avoid disruptive actions as various functions may be requested from a system. The problem is that obtaining such information on system state may necessitate collecting data from a number of devices, as there may not be a single data point for state information. This paper describes and illustrates an approach for designing OKD-MES on top of CPSs that controls robot workstations and conveyor-based transportation system of a pallet-based production system.

This paper presents a potential solution to fill a gap in both research and practice that there are few interactions between transnational industry cooperation (TIC) and transnational university cooperation (TUC) in transnational innovation ecosystems. To strengthen the synergies between TIC and TUC for innovation, the first step is to match suitable industrial firms from two countries for collaboration through their common connections to transnational university/academic partnerships. Our proposed matching solution is based on the integration of social science theories and specific artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. While the insights of social sciences, e.g., innovation studies and social network theory, have potential to answer the question of why TIC and TUC should be looked at as synergetic entities with elaborated conceptualization, the method of machine learning, as one specific technic off AI, can help answer the question of how to realize that synergy. On the way towards a transdisciplinary approach to TIC and TUC synergy building, or creating transnational university-industry co-innovation networks, the paper takes an initial step by examining what the supports and gaps of existing studies on the topic are, and using the context of EU–China science, technology and innovation cooperation as a testbed. This is followed by the introduction of our proposed approach and our suggestions for future research.

The utilization of robotic systems has been increasing in the last decade. This increase has been derived by the evolvement in the computational capabilities, communication systems, and the information systems of the manufacturing systems which is reflected in the concept of Industry 4.0. Furthermore, the robotics systems are continuously required to address new challenges in the industrial and manufacturing domain, like keeping humans in the loop, among other challenges. Briefly, the keeping humans in the loop concept focuses on closing the gap between humans and machines by introducing a safe and trustworthy environment for the human workers to work side by side with robots and machines. It aims at increasing the engagement of the human as the automation level increases rather than replacing the human, which can be nearly impossible in some applications. Consequently, the collaborative robots (Cobots) have been created to allow physical interaction with the human worker. However, these cobots still lack of recognizing the human emotional state. In this regard, this paper presents an approach for adapting cobot parameters to the emotional state of the human worker. The approach utilizes the Electroencephalography (EEG) technology for digitizing and understanding the human emotional state. Afterwards, the parameters of the cobot are instantly adjusted to keep the human emotional state in a desirable range which increases the confidence and the trust between the human and the cobot. In addition, the paper includes a review on technologies and methods for emotional sensing and recognition. Finally, this approach is tested on an ABB YuMi cobot with commercially available EEG headset.

This paper presents an approach to using semantic web services in managing production processes. In particular, the devices in the production systems considered expose web service interfaces through which they can then be controlled, while semantic web service descriptions formulated in web ontology language for services (OWL-S) make it possible to determine the conditions and effects of invoking the web services. The approach involves three web services that cooperate to achieve production goals using the domain web services. In particular, one of the three services maintains a semantic model of the current state of the system, while another uses the model to compose the domain web services so that they jointly achieve the desired goals. The semantic model of the system is automatically updated based on event notifications sent by the domain services.