The Role of Interoperability in The Fourth Industrial Revolution Era

Abstract In the manufacturing domain, interoperability represents a characteristic of a manufacturing system in which its components are capable of exchanging information with one another, using the information that has been exchanged. Even though the discussion about interoperability issues can trace back to the 1970s, system interoperability is still the “elephant in the room”. Additionally, in the past few years, research topics related to the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, have been gradually accepted and promoted by governments and organizations all around the world. A research question then arises: what is the role of interoperability in the fourth industrial revolution era? The aim of this paper is to provide a scientific and evidence-based answer to this question. From an academic perspective, a systematic literature review was carried out to discover the main concepts related to interoperability in an Industry 4.0 context. From an industrial perspective, a questionnaire survey was developed to guide the application of a multi-criteria decision analysis method, the Analytic Hierarchy Process, used to analyze and make explicit the relationships of the previously discovered concepts. Results of this study can be used as a basis for future interoperability research in this new industrial revolution wave.