OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND WORK SAFETY SYSTEMS IN COMPLIANCE WITH INDUSTRY 4.0: RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

Industry 4.0 is the contemporary approach that denotes the transformation process in the global chains of value creation. This approach has a potential to remove restrictions between physical objects, converting them into a comprehensive complex system of interoperable, interconnected and interdependent components. Given Industry 4.0 becoming the eminent concept, occupational health and safety management (OHSM) systems have been facing new challenges. On the other hand, to the best of our knowledge, we argue that current state of the art does not sufficiently take account of whether the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” will impact occupational health and safety in industry 4.0-based supply chains. The main goal of this research, therefore, is to demonstrate several new research opportunities that may advance our knowledge of Industry 4.0 based OHSM. In this regard, the contribution of this study is twofold: first, it investigates the current literature studying how Industry 4.0 may affect OHSM activities in contemporary supply chains and organizations. Secondly, given the analysis of the current state of the art, future research directions and proposals are discussed.