Evolving manufacturing mobility in Industry 4.0: the case of process industries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to incorporating mobility into continuous manufacturing following the advent of Industry 4.0 (I4.0). Design/methodology/approach The investigation is based on a year-long canonical action research into a paper-manufacturing company implementing core I4.0 technologies. Findings The findings show how to: classify manufacturing mobility strategy based on the dimensions of team, task and control; design business processes enabled by mobile cyber-physical resources; involve different stakeholders in modeling mobility; and create a comprehensive guide to assist in implementing the mobile digitalization required by I4.0. Originality/value Theoretically, this paper expands the concept of manufacturing mobility in I4.0. In practice, it proposes a participative roadmap to assist technology management in increasingly decentralized environments, identifying the intertwined network of cyber-physical actors, processes and services.