Industrie 4.0 – An empirical and literature-based study how product development is influenced by the digital transformation

The fourth industrial revolution, referred to as Industrie 4.0 in the German high-tech strategy, is in most cases associated with the industrialization of production, but the term is increasingly broadly understood. Industrie 4.0 means the networking of all areas involved in the value creation process. In areas such as production and politics, visions are already being driven forward, but in the development of products and product-related services it is often unclear how engineering needs to change to realize the potentials of Industrie 4.0. Several research projects are already dealing with the development of new processes, methods and tools to enable these potentials. However, studies show that companies do not have the resources or strategies to implement such solutions. In many ways, the influence of Industrie 4.0 and its impact on product development is still insufficiently known. Therefore, a literature-based study was conducted to systematically identify context factors that characterize Industrie 4.0. In order to analyze the impact on product development, a second step involved an impact analysis with the context factors of Industrie 4.0 onto the context factors of product development known from the literature. ... mehrIn a third step, strongly influenced fields of product development were identified and their relevance for the realization of the potentials of Industrie 4.0 for product development was evaluated in an online survey. In addition, the current status in these fields was analyzed in interviews with experts from industry. With methods of foresight a portfolio was created, which couples the influence of Industrie 4.0 on the context factors of product development with their future robustness. Comparing the current state of development with the findings from the portfolio, recommendations for future research were formulated.