Industry 4.0 in Labor Intensive Industries, Opportunities and Challenges

Many industries face challenges in industry 4.0’s application (I4.0). This paper investigates application of I4.0’ technologies in labor-intensive-manufacturing-Systems (LIMS), because many industries require labor-intensive operations. Also, many SMEs perform operations manually due to high automation cost. However, there is no framework for I4.0 application in LIMS. This research used systems-engineering to develop, for the first time, logical architecture of LIMS. A state-based modeling approach was proposed to model architecture. The proposed novel model can simulate interactions between human and I4.0 technologies. This allows assessing impact of I4.0 technologies on LIMS and assuring concurrent optimization of LIMS performance and human-labor’s well-being.