An Analysis of Prominent Industry 4.0 Technologies in Germany
Following the increasing discourse among scholars and manufacturers on industry 4.0, there has been a growing curiosity to realize its potential. This paper aims at identifying the prominent industry 4.0 technologies that Germany, as a leading country in this area, is researching on. The researcher does this by identifying a list of technologies that are currently under research by German research institutes, categorizing them in the 9 fundamental technologies that pillar the fourth industrial revolution and running a head count of each of those technologies in scientific databases.The chronology of this paper starts with an introduction to the topic detailing what the term industry 4.0 means following with the literature review to purposely explore the progress made by researchers on the topic and finally the last part of the paper that is divided into four sections entailing the methodology results, analysis and conclusion. Figures and tables with details of the findings will be found at the end of this paper. The researcher identified three main categories of industry 4.0 technologies as additive manufacturing, internet of things and autonomous robots as the top prominent technologies mostly in research. Other technologies such as augmented reality and the cloud are relevant in research as well as big data analytics as opposed to horizontal and vertical system integration technologies that are barely in research