Assembly system configuration through Industry 4.0 principles: the expected change in the actual paradigms

Industry 4.0 creates what has been called a "smart factory". The possibility to a wide data from industrial processes makes possible to act smart action related to the system changes. -Physical Systems monitor physical processes and make possible decentralized decisions or even, the last stage, a self-smart system adaptation. Thanks to the connectivity of the different production (machines, work stations, etc.) it is possible to generate information, to share and provide it and to create a smart system in which a predictive and automated decision making process with self-reconfiguration of the production system is possible to occur. As consequence Industry 4.0 strongly impact on the actual assembly paradigms, even in the cases in which the human factor is , as manual assembly. This paper aims to investigate how these transformations are expected to . A future state map of the assembly paradigms as effect of the integration with the Industry 4.0 is presented. Moreover, a general architecture to implement Industry 4.0 principles into assembly systems is provided, highlighting how the final steps of implementation represented by Operator Support Systems (OSS) and Self-Adapting Smart Assembly System (SASS) are crucial. A report of a real case study derived by an Italian worldwide industrial refrigerator manufacturer a further element of interest of the research and demonstrates the practical implication of the .