Abstract

The Internet and smart devices seem to drive our society into a new era. This movement has been identified as the digital transformation affecting all fields of our daily life. And this will also change the way how we produce our goods in future. In 2011 these expected changes have been named as Industry 4.0 as a synonym for the upcoming fourth industrial revolution. Industry 4.0 started as a buzzword, but quickly became the synonym for the production of the future worldwide. Over the last decade the Industry 4.0 –idea has developed from research to market products for building smart factories. But besides the technological advances, many new challenges have been identified since and need further research to make the digital transformation of industry a broad worldwide success. In this presentation first todays state of development will be shown using many examples from industry. The second part will then discuss the lessons learned from the last decade of Industry 4.0 and identify new fields of research in a broader socio-economic scope.