Logistics 4.0 and supply chain 4.0 in the automotive industry

Abstract

The Industry 4.0 technologies give real benefits to the plants where they are implemented such as performance improvement, costs and delays reductions. The automotive plants are among the factories that could implement most of these technologies. Industry 4.0 can affect all of the processes which happen in the automotive industry manufacturing plants - engineering, production, logistics, management, etc. Analysis of all of the processes in one article is too complex task and due to this the paper is focused only on logistics and supply chain. The aim of this article is to investigate the potential possibilities for implementation of Logistics 4.0 and Supply Chain 4.0 in the automotive industry plants, in particular in Bulgaria. Specially designed survey was used as investigation method. It consists of two groups with proposals and assumptions. The survey was conducted by 12 automotive industry logistics experts who are on 6 different logistics positions. The results show that the production visibility (assembly lines connected to internet) and blockchain technologies have the biggest values to the logistics and supply chain. But the cybersecurity and faulty data are the main challenges in front of them.