Application of Industry 4.0 in Sustainability of Servitized Manufacturers

Abstract

In the current scenario of intense competition, shorter product life cycle and rapid change in technologies, it is difficult for the manufactures to attain sustainability through offering only product and add-on services considering high investment in design and development of the products. To cope up with this situation, various alternatives were developed among which servitization has gained ample attention from researchers and practitioners in the last two decades.Servitization is the new dimension, which manufacturers believe, could provide them sustainable business in terms of customer retention, revenue generation and market penetration. However, the implementation of servitization was facing several challenges that are now eased through the onset of Industry 4.0 that encompasses the advancements in information and communication technologies such as internet of things, digital twin, big data analytics and cloud computing.Today, the integration of industry 4.0 and servitizationis considered to have
potential in overcoming the servitization failures and derive maximum benefits from the shift of product centric to the solution oriented business model. In this chapter, we discuss the different aspects of servitization and the augmenting role of industry 4.0 technologies in the transformation. The sustainability dimension of servitization of manufacturing industries is also discussed.