The integration of exponential technologies in the traditional manufacturing processes constitutes a noteworthy trend of the past two decades, aiming to reshape the industrial environment. This kind of digital transformation, which is driven by the Industry 4.0 initiative, not only affects the individual manufacturing assets, but the involved human workforce, as well. Since human operators should be placed in the centre of this revolution, they ought to be endowed with new tools and through-engineering solutions that improve their efficiency. In addition, vivid visualization techniques must be utilized, in order to support them during their daily operations in an auxiliary and comprehensive way. Towards this end, we describe a user-centered methodology, which utilizes augmented reality (AR) and computer vision (CV) techniques, supporting low-skilled operators in the maintenance procedures. The described mobile augmented reality maintenance assistant (MARMA) makes use of the handheld’s camera and locates the asset on the shop floor and generates AR maintenance instructions. We evaluate the performance of MARMA in a real use case scenario, using an automotive industrial asset provided by a collaborative manufacturer. During the evaluation procedure, manufacturer experts confirmed its contribution as an application that can effectively support the maintenance engineers.

The rise of the fourth industrial revolution aspires to digitize any traditional manufacturing process, paving the way for new organisation schemes and management principles that affect business models, the environment, and services across the entire value chain. During the last two decades, the generated advancements have been analysed and discussed from a bunch of technological and business perspectives gleaned from a variety of academic journals. With the aim to identify the digital footprint of Industry 4.0 in the current manufacturing ecosystem, a systematic literature survey of surveys is conducted here, based on survey academic articles that cover the current state-of-the-art. The 59 selected high-impact survey manuscripts are analysed using PRISMA principles and categorized according to their technologies under analysis and impact, providing valuable insights for the research and business community. Specifically, the influence Industry 4.0 exerts on traditional business models, small and medium-sized enterprises, decision-making processes, human–machine interaction, and circularity affairs are investigated and brought out, while research gaps, business opportunities, and their relevance to Industry 5.0 principles are pointed out.

The Taylor series is used for the analysis of time-varying linear systems with the introduction of the product matrix of the Taylor polynomial vector and its transpose. For the solution of the optimal control problem, the operational matrix of backward integration for the Taylor series is introduced. In this way, the state transition matrix of optimal control of linear systems with quadratic performance index may be integrated approximately via Taylor series. The results obtained indicate an excellent agreement with the exact solution for a small number of terms.