Impact of emerging technologies on digital manufacturing: Insights from literature review

Over the past decade, rapid development of new technologies and smart gadgets has digitized the world. The high penetration of smart phones, internet, social media and online shopping in our day-to-day life have significantly changed the shopping habits of buyers and ultimately the demand patterns, imposing huge pressure on organizations to transform their business model. Today, manufacturing companies are trying to switch from mass production to mass customization by adopting emerging technologies owing to the reason that modern customer’s expectations are very high. Adopting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing (3DP), Internet of things (IoT), etc. in production system can be a viable solution to overcome these challenges. This article aims at exploring the impact and benefits of emerging digital technologies of industry 4.0 in manufacturing. The research is based on literature review which unfolds the advantages of emerging technologies and challenges to their adoption. The digital technologies discussed in this paper having revolutionary impact on industrial manufacturing are 3D printing, Robotics, Sensors, IoT, Big data analytics (BDA), AI, Nanotechnology and social technologies. This study is an attempt to present insights toward utilization of these technologies in production systems which will enable digital manufacturing.