Smart digital retrofitting in manufacturing operations for sustainable Industry 4.0 implementation

This paper develops an Industry 4.0 step-by-step implementation strategy drawing from the World Class Manufacturing methodology with the aim of providing sustainable value creation in manufacturing operations. In particular, we focus on the first step of such a strategy – namely Smart Digital Retrofitting – a brownfield approach that integrates new technologies and sensors into legacy systems to achieve Industry 4.0 basic requirements of seamless communication, interoperability among machines, and real-time capability. We characterize this step with the socio-technical system factors, describe its positive outcomes in terms of productivity gains and waste and losses reduction, and discuss its theoretical and practical contributions.