Industry 4.0 in Metal Forming Industry Towards Automotive Applications: A Review

Abstract

Review Industry 4.0 in Metal Forming Industry Towards Automotive Applications: A Review Heli Liu 1,2, Saksham Dhawan 1,2, Merrill Shen 1, Kangan Chen 1, Vincent Wu 3, and Liliang Wang 1,2,* 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK 2 SmartForming Research Base, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK 3 School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE, UK * Correspondence: liliang.wang@imperial.ac.uk Received: 23 September 2022 Accepted: 18 November 2022 Published: 18 December 2022 Abstract: Industry 4.0 is shaping the metal forming industry. The ongoing key Industry 4.0 technologies, including the industrial cyber-physical system (I-CPS), industrial internet of things (I-IoT), digital twin (DT), big data (BD) and cloud computing (CC), are expected to improve every stage during the metal forming processes, including the supply chains, raw material provision, tool design and manufacture, forming operations, energy consumption, cost, quality control and customer services. Here, we review the development and implementations of these key Industry 4.0 technologies in the metal forming industry. Based on the discussion of the opportunities and challenges of Industry 4.0 technologies in metal forming, this review provides some perspectives of future metal forming research directions towards automotive applications.