Rediscovering the Forgotten Field of Industrial Applications in Information Systems Research: A Literature Review of Industry 4.0

Abstract

: This paper is a literature review to determine if industrial applications are appropriately represented in information systems (IS) scholarship. The field of Industry 4.0 was used as a representative sample of industrial information systems and the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Senior Scholars’ Basket of Journals was used as a representative, albeit highly ranked, sample of IS literature. Keywords representing the eleven recognised technologies of Industry 4.0 were chosen and used to search the eight IS journals over a time period corresponding with the lifecycle of Industry 4.0. This resulted in 1305 papers being discovered. After calibrating the search terms, a second search yielded 770 papers. These papers were screened for relevance to Industry 4.0 and for use of a manufacturing application. The resulting 20 papers were queried in detail to establish the concepts used and a concept centric matrix was produced. The analysis shows that industrial information applications are rarely used to undertake IS research in the academic field. The dominant concept revealed was digital transformation resulting in changes to business processes. The contribution to the literature is to highlight that substantial research studies can be conducted in the industrial manufacturing arena, but very few have been conducted in the last decade. Therefore, it is an area worth exploring for future IS research.