Quality management in the industry 4.0 era

In the current competitive scenario, manufacturing companies are facing various challenges related to an increasing level of variability. This variability means different sets of dimensions such as demand, volume, process, technology, quality, customer behavior and supplier attitude, and transform the industrial systems engineering domain. A new paradigm tries to solve these challenges and solutions such as "the fourth industrial revolution" or "Industry 4.0" refers to new production patterns, including new technologies, productive factors and labor organizations, which are completely changing the production processes and developing high-efficiency production systems that make it possible to minimize production costs and improve production and product quality. Manufacturing companies need to achieve a substantial improvement in performance by manufacturing high-quality products and creating highly flexible systems that make it possible to maintain their efficiency even when demand varies dramatically. Tools for the management and optimization of quality are vitally important. In this way the adoption of highly flexible cyber physical production units permits the implementation of production processes capable of guaranteeing high-quality standards in the finished product, even in the case of small production lots. Industry 4.0 provides promising opportunities for quality management therefore, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the quality management and industry 4.0 concepts and analyze the current state of literature trying to understand the implications and opportunities for quality management in the industry 4.0 era.