Supply Chain design and performance enhancement by industry 4.0

Abstract

Supply chain design is unique to a particular industry. Supply chain of a company consists of different elements (viz. Planning, Information, Sourcing, Inventory and manufacturing). Earlier elements of the supply chain used to work in isolation. Information sharing was very difficult and was not in real-time. IIoT has made information sharing across the elements of the supply chain possible and in real-time. IIoT has increased transparency in information sharing. This will make the supplier, manufacturer, and customer to be in synchronization. This has brought down inefficiencies in the supply chain. This has also increased trust among the members of the chain. This has reduced the wastes related to the communication gaps. IIoT has helped companies in making their customers happy, by supplying quality products on time. With the introduction of I4.0, many researchers have applying Industry 4.0 technologies for designing a company’s supply chain. I4.0 is becoming popular among practitioners and researchers, in the design of an organization’s supply chain (SC). This is mainly because, by using I4.0, sup-ply chain will become more flexible, efficient, quick and become transparent among SC elements. An attempt is made in this research work is to review the existing technologies and then present future research directions. This would help those who are interested in pursuing further research.