Towards Industry 4.0: an overview of European strategic roadmaps

New achievements in information and communication technologies (ICT) are drastically influencing several industrial sectors. The provision of connectivity, networked entities, real-time data, and pervasive information is shifting paradigms in industries. However, this rapid evolution requires a proper comprehension and definition by scholars and practitioners in order to achieve a broad dissemination of the technological progress. Today, the trend towards a digital revolution in manufacturing is known as “Industry 4.0”. However, the footprint of these evolutions, the technological borders, and the application frameworks are not yet specified. Therefore, the adoption of this paradigm change still requires more research to further develop the knowledge about the drivers and accomplishments of Industry 4.0. Towards this goal, this paper reviews some major EU industrial guidelines, roadmaps, and scientific literature that led to the depiction of the term Industry 4.0, and explores how key technologies and concepts have been addressed over time.This work is financed by the FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project CMUP-ERI/TPE/0011/2013 of the CMU Portugal Program and by Project "TEC4Growth - Pervasive Intelligence, Enhancers and Proofs of Concept with Industrial Impact/NORTE-01-0145FEDER-000020" financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)".