Track: Doctoral Dissertation Competition

Abstract

Manufacturing is currently undergoing a fourth industrial revolution, referred to as Industry 4.0, enabled by digital technologies and advances in our ability to collect and use data. Quality 4.0 is the application of Industry 4.0 to enhance the quality function within an organization. Quality practitioners are uniquely positioned within organizations and already possess data application skillsets. Despite a perception that Quality 4.0 will be critical to future success shared by a majority of industry, most companies have not attempted to implement Quality 4.0 strategy, and those that have report very low rates of success. Potentially significant factors impacting Quality 4.0 implementations were extrapolated through the systematic literature review process. Case study analysis provided a baseline for successful implementation as including an industry 4.0 technology or technologies for data collection, the presence of autonomous data analysis to convert this data into useful formats, and a tangible improvement to the performance of the system being driven by these data efforts. A conceptual model for Quality 4.0 deployment was developed through literature review and case study analysis and expert interviews are used to refine and valide the model.  The output of this research is an initial model focused on tangible deployment of Quality 4.0 in manufacturing settings.