Design

Digital Twins Using Semantic Modeling and AI

Digital Twins Using Semantic Modeling and AI

Self-learning development and simulation of industrial production facilities
Wolfram Höpken ORCID Icon, Ralf Stetter ORCID Icon, Markus Pfeil ORCID Icon, Thomas Bayer ORCID Icon, Bernd Michelberger, Markus Till, Timo Schuchter, Alexander Lohr
The AI-driven, self-learning digital twin continuously adapts to real system behavior, ensuring an optimal representation of the production process. A comprehensive semantic model serves as the foundation for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) approaches. Insights derived from AI methods are integrated into this model, enhancing the interpretability and explainability of AI systems. Techniques from the field of eXplainable AI (XAI) facilitate the automated description of AI models and their findings, as well as the development of self-explanatory models.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | Edition 2 | Pages 30-36
Error Management in Production

Error Management in Production

Current situation and challenges in the industry
Johannes Prior ORCID Icon, Milan Brisse ORCID Icon, Nikita Govorov, Robert Egel ORCID Icon, Bernd Kuhlenkötter ORCID Icon
This study explores experience-based error management on the basis of 23 participating companies. This study aims to identify essential criteria for effective error management in production. For this purpose, a comprehensive questionnaire was created, featuring 77 questions across eight key topics, including error culture, documentation, root cause analysis and software-supported knowledge management. The following analysis highlights both positive and negative measures, providing specific recommendations to optimize experience-based error management.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | Edition 2 | Pages 38-45
Work-Integrated Learning in Industry 4.0

Work-Integrated Learning in Industry 4.0

A qualitative analysis of various assistance systems in assembly
Kathleen Warnhoff ORCID Icon
In the era of Industry 4.0, many industrial companies are facing major transformations. In the process of digitalization, factory management is adopting new technologies such as cognitive assistance systems, which has led to changes in work processes. Regarding assembly in the metal and electrical industries, it is unclear to what extent this development has promoted work-integrated learning. Therefore, the topic of this paper is a qualitative analysis that explores employees' perceptions of the learning opportunities and risks presented by cognitive assistance systems. Results: Not all assembly employees benefit equally from these new developments.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | Edition 2 | Pages 20-29 | DOI 10.30844/I4SE.25.2.20
Circular Economy Enabled by Digitization

Circular Economy Enabled by Digitization

Digital networking in the procurement of manufacturing companies
Pius Finkel ORCID Icon, Peter Wurster ORCID Icon, David Pfister
Current developments in digitalization and data economy, especially multilateral data sharing platforms, offer the potential to accelerate the implementation of circular economy practices in the manufacturing industry. This article systematically examines the extent to which digitalization could serve as a catalyst for circular economy in the procurement of such companies. As a basis for the following research, eight experts from five leading global manufacturers and suppliers in the automotive and aviation industries were interviewed. This article demonstrates practical hypotheses for the sustainable design of supply chains and proposes two specific use cases for circular economy practices that can proactively counteract the use of resources.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 26-33 | DOI 10.30844/I4SE.25.1.26
Increasing Supply Chain Resilience with Reverse Logistics

Increasing Supply Chain Resilience with Reverse Logistics

Hypotheses for a value model
Jürgen Hamann ORCID Icon, Christoph Wenig ORCID Icon
Manufacturing companies incorporate reverse logistics as a building block of the circular economy for greater sustainability. Case studies show that this can result in strategic opportunities. This article summarizes an analysis of expert interviews on the increase in supply chain resilience attributed to reverse logistics. Potential benefits are highlighted, and companies are encouraged to examine the approach and implement innovative solutions. The result is a hypothesis-based value model that serves as an orientation aid for decision-makers.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 34-40
Distributed Application Integration in Industry

Distributed Application Integration in Industry

Employing microservices for enterprise application integration (EAI)
Jan-Peer Rudolph ORCID Icon
In line with current digital transformations, the number of software applications in use by companies is continuously increasing. This particularly affects industrial enterprises, which face challenges due to their often complex business processes. A holistic and sustainable integration of these business processes requires a strong link between the different information systems used. In this context, application integration, also known as enterprise application integration (EAI), is becoming more important. Modern approaches such as the use of microservices offer a particularly flexible and efficient solution for seamlessly connecting different applications and thus promoting the agility and scalability of a company’s IT landscape.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 74-80
Computer Use in Industrial Business Processes

Computer Use in Industrial Business Processes

A systematic literature review of the last 40 years
Norbert Gronau ORCID Icon
The most important value-adding industrial business processes are product creation and order processing. For 40 years now, Industry 4.0 Science and its predecessor titles have supported the development and implementation of the software used in these industrial business processes. In honor of the journal’s 40th anniversary, a systematic literature review is carried out to identify trends that played a role in the past but no longer do today. The research provides some surprising insights into the topics that have been important in the last 40 years – as well as those that will remain relevant in the future.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 8-14 | DOI 10.30844/I4SE.25.1.8
Assembly in Transition

Assembly in Transition

Empirical results of digitalization
Herwig Winkler ORCID Icon
Assembly is an important part of industrial production and is also characterized by a high proportion of manual work. Manufacturing companies have an intrinsic interest in increasing personnel productivity and preventing unit labor costs from rising. Many thus hope to gain economic benefits by implementing digitalization projects. The potential of digitalization in assembly must be exploited to achieve these goals.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 42-49
The Advantages of Microservices

The Advantages of Microservices

An examination of current literature on its application in companies
Ralph Riedel ORCID Icon
The intensive use of the term microservice calls for a theoretical analysis of the technology. Since service-oriented architecture approaches have produced rather disappointing results, the focus should be on the advantages of microservices. This article questions which principles justify the use of microservices as a system architecture. So far, some of the advantages mentioned in the examined literature have not been further explained or defined. There is also a lack of key figures for measuring success.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 50-59
Cloud-Agnostic Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Cloud-Agnostic Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

An approach to prevent vendor lock-in
Modern cloud architectures benefit, among other things, from improved availability due to different cloud locations and greater flexible scalability due to the theoretically unlimited computing power of the cloud. However, in addition to challenges regarding data protection and data security, companies are increasingly concerned about the growing dependency on their cloud provider. In this article, we present a prototype implementation for switching between cloud services from different providers at the PaaS level.
Industry 4.0 Science | Volume 41 | 2025 | Edition 1 | Pages 68-73
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