The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Historical and Conceptual Review

Abstract

The economic and social progress of countries around the world is linked to the development of industry. Industrial organizations also seek to improve their production processes to meet the continuous changes in customer demands and commodity specifications and  improve their competition in the market. The most prominent challenges that organizations face are digital technological developments that play an important role in improving production processes and making them more flexible and efficient. The adoption of new technologies is an inevitable response. According to the world's manufacturing leaders, the developments represent the emergence of a new revolution in manufacturing, referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), which represents the process of fully digitizing production processes.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the historical development of the industrial revolutions that led to the emergence of Industry 4.0, with a presentation of international initiatives in this regard and a discussion of the most prominent proposals on its concept. A qualitative analysis based on a literature review was used to achieve the goal and answer the question: How did the historical development of Industry 4.0 lead to the emergence and development of the concept, and what are the basic characteristics that distinguish it from previous industrial revolutions? The reasons that led to the fourth era of the industrial revolutions are due to a group of different interrelated factors, including technological progress, economic factors, changing consumer expectations, government initiatives, and the availability of data.