This paper aims to explore the main challenges facing the pharmaceutical industry today, as well as the potential opportunities offered by emerging Industry 4.0 technologies that can help address these challenges. To this end, a systematic literature review (SLR) based on a search with the keywords “Pharma” and “Industry 4.0” for identification, selection, and evaluation of the published research in this area, was performed. Thus, following this approach, two main questions were attempted to be answered: (i) “What is the As-Is situation that characterize the   today’s pharmaceutical production”; and, (ii) “How technological perspective presents itself as a possible To-Be situation by the use of I4.0 concepts”. The key contribution of this research lays in the exploration of different obstacles in the current way how pharma is operating and what concepts from Industry 4.0 are in place to overcome them. The conclusion shows that the special situation in pharma due to its strong regulation by external authorities needs special ways of process design.

Keywords
Industry 4.0, Pharma 4.0, Smart Manufacturing, Pharmaceutical Production; Challenges and opportunities.