Trends, opportunities, and challenges in the integration of the additive manufacturing with Industry 4.0

Abstract

The current study skims the trends, opportunities, and challenges in integrating additive manufacturing with Industry 4.0. The critical points of the existing review studies have also been discussed. The search query related to AM and Industry 4.0 was used for obtaining the information from two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The papers were screened for duplicity and irrelevancy according to the topic of study. The bibliometric software R studio, Hiscite and Vosviewer were used for the analysis of downloaded articles. The bibliometric information related to the most-cited and productive authors, countries, sources, and universities was extracted. Lotka’s and Bradford’s law applicability to authors and sources, respectively, have been demonstrated. The interconnections between the authors, their respective countries and universities were represented with the help of three-field plot. The trend topics, keywords, and thematic evolution form the basis of a review of the cited work. The critical issues related to AM for achieving Industry 4.0 were reviewed. The insight of the case studies powering industry 4.0 was also presented. The challenges and limitations of AM’s implementation with respect to Industry 4.0 were highlighted. The conclusions were drawn out, and future scope was pointed out.