Table 1.

Main characteristics of a smart Industry 4.0 factory

	Smart 4.0 factory characteristics
Business model	✓Sustainability: to realize industrial value creation according to the economic, social and environmental domains of sustainability; ✓Cost reduction and efficiency: to better match supply and demand; to optimize resource, and asset utilization; to reduce time to market; to provide innovative after-sale services for product maintenance; ✓Competitiveness in the long run; ✓Respect of ethical rules.
Production processes	✓Interoperability: to support cross-linking of value creation networks through Information and Communication Technologies; ✓Decentralization: the increasing organizational complexity in the manufacturing processes require decision making activities being decentralized; ✓Real time capability: to analyze data immediately providing the derived insights; ✓Flexibility in manufacturing; ✓Mass customization; ✓Productivity and quality improvement; ✓Increased speed of production
Equipment	✓Automated machines and tools: equipment should be able to adapt to changes of all other value creation factors and to improve processes through self-optimization and autonomous decision making.
Products	✓Smart products: inserted with sensors and microchips to allow human-product communication to improve manufacturing and semi-autonomously control production stages