Production Logistics in Industry 3.X: Bibliometric Analysis, Frontier Case Study, and Future Directions

At present, the development of the global manufacturing industry is still in the transition stage from Industry 3.0 to Industry 4.0 (i.e., Industry 3.X), and the production logistics system is becoming more and more complex due to the individualization of customer demands and the high frequency of order changes. In order to systematically analyze the research status and dynamic evolution trend of production logistics in the Industry 3.X stage, this paper designed a Log-Likelihood ratio-based latent Dirichlet allocation (LLR-LDA) algorithm based on bibliometrics and knowledge graph technology, taking the literature of China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Web of Science database as the data source. In-depth bibliometric analysis of literature was carried out from research progress, hotspot evolution, and frontier trends. At the same time, taking the case of scientific research projects overcome by our research group as an example, it briefly introduced the synchronized decision-making framework of digital twin-enabled production logistics system. It is expected to broaden the research boundary of production logistics in the Industry 3.X stage, promote the development and progress of the industry, and provide valuable reference for steadily moving towards the Industry 4.0 stage.