Industry 4.0 refers to the fourth industrial revolution: the fusion of physical production with digital technologies such as the IIoT, big-data analytics, cloud computing, AI, additive manufacturing, and autonomous systems to create "smart factories."
Its promise is operations that are self-monitoring, predictive, and adaptive. Crucially, digital tools amplify a sound lean foundation — they do not replace it; automating a wasteful process just produces waste faster.