Industry 4.0 and Cloud Manufacturing: A Comparative Analysis

The introduction of the Internet into the manufacturing environment is becoming a prominent trend. In this context, two important concepts concerning manufacturing, i.e. Industry 4.0 and cloud manufacturing have been proposed. Industry 4.0 refers to the fourth industrial revolution and is often understood as the application of Cyber-Physical Systems in industrial production with the help of the Internet to achieve the Internet of Things and the Internet of Services. Meanwhile, the Internet-based new business technology trends, such as cloud, servitization and collaboration, have brought about a novel cloud-based service-oriented manufacturing model — cloud manufacturing. These two concepts, though bearing some similarities, adopt different ideas and approaches for promoting the development of manufacturing industry. Given the great significance of the two concepts to the manufacturing industry, there is a need to understand their similarities and differences. This paper firstly gives a brief up-to-date review of Industry 4.0 and cloud manufacturing, and then clarifies the relationship between them based on the basic concepts and their current research statuses.