Smart manufacturing: Characteristics, technologies and enabling factors

The purpose of this article is to collect and structure the various characteristics, technologies and enabling factors available in the current body of knowledge that are associated with smart manufacturing. Eventually, it is expected that this selection of characteristics, technologies and enabling factors will help compare and distinguish other initiatives such as Industry 4.0, cyber-physical production systems, smart factory, intelligent manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, which are frequently used synonymously with smart manufacturing. The result of this article is a comprehensive list of such characteristics, technologies and enabling factors that are regularly associated with smart manufacturing. This article also considers principles of “semantic similarity” to establish the basis for a future smart manufacturing ontology, since it was found that many of the listed items show varying overlaps; therefore, certain characteristics and technologies are merged and/or clustered. This results in a set of five defining characteristics, 11 technologies and three enabling factors that are considered relevant for the smart manufacturing scope. This article then evaluates the derived structure by matching the characteristics and technology clusters of smart manufacturing with the design principles of Industry 4.0 and cyber-physical systems. The authors aim to provide a solid basis to start a broad and interdisciplinary discussion within the research and industrial community about the defining characteristics, technologies and enabling factors of smart manufacturing.