Industry 4.0 in services: challenges and opportunities for value co-creation

Purpose This study aims to recognize industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges associated with the co-creation of value in industrial services and to propose a theoretical framework for smart industrial services systems. Design/methodology/approach The authors carried out a systematic literature review based on the systematic search flow method; thereafter, the authors used the content analysis proposed by Bardin (2011) to analyze the resulting portfolio. Findings The authors identified a total of five industry 4.0 opportunities and five challenges for co-creating value in industrial services. Drawing upon these findings, this paper builds a theoretical framework for the smart industrial services system, in which the industry 4.0 opportunities arise from the digitally mediated inter-firm interactions and the challenges related to the resources of this system. Research limitations/implications This study may not have enabled a complete coverage of all existing peer-reviewed articles in the field of value co-creation in industrial services associated with the industry 4.0 technologies. Also, the framework is constrained by being theoretical rather than empirically grounded. Practical implications The findings give managers support to devise strategies for overcoming the barriers that impede them from taking advantage of the opportunities offered by industry 4.0 for co-creating value in industrial services. Originality/value This paper’s uniqueness is to identify the industry 4.0 opportunities and challenges for value co-creation in the context of industrial services and to propose a framework for the smart industrial services system.