Manufacturing quality assessment in the industry 4.0 era: a review

Maintaining high-quality standards has consistently been the main goal of industries. With rising demand and customisation, industries must strike a balance between cost, manufacturing time, and quality. The technological advancements of Industry 4.0 have allowed the implementation of accurate quality prediction frameworks in the manufacturing lines. For quality prediction in manufacturing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence offer several benefits, but there are also a number of limitations that must be taken into consideration. The current study aims to highlight the aforementioned benefits and drawbacks. To do this, a literature review on the area of quality prediction and monitoring in Industry 4.0 manufacturing lines is conducted. The results demonstrate that the merits of the reviewed methods are many but six significant drawbacks must be accounted for the successful implementation of the studied quality prediction frameworks. The current study can serve as a ‘map’ for production managers in industries as well as experts in the field of manufacturing as they weigh the benefits and drawbacks of popular quality prediction models, as it provides information needed to determine to what extent these methods can be applied to new or existing manufacturing lines.