Industry 4.0: A Special Section in IEEE Access

Industry 4.0 can be said to be the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. Originally, the term "Industrie 4.0" is from a project in the high-tech strategy of the German government, which hope to promote the computerization of manufacturing. Usually involves terms like cyber-physical systems, Internet of things, amd cloud computing. For now, Industry 4.0 becomes an emerging buzzword that is gaining significant interest among all stakeholders of the global industry-related R&D market from academia to international companies. It is a new business model attracting much interest, yet the definitions are not very matured and is an amazing melting pot of disruptive technologies. No doubt, to maximize the impact of Industry 4.0, researchers from different fields and industry have to work together applying the new technologies in practice. On the top of the wave, it is timely to analyze the cross section who can benefit from the novel achievements of Industry 4.0.