LAUSR

Based on the rapidly developed information technologies such as Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics, at present, the concept of Industry 4.0 has become a reality in numerous concrete scenarios and applications. In those areas, one of the primary aims lies in building the distributed, collaborative and automated design & manufacturing workflow for the smart factory, manufacturing, and logistics. By following the design principles that first proposed by Hermann et al. in their article titled ‘Design Principles for Industrie 4.0 Scenarios’ in 2016, both industrial and academia are working hard to tackle the four associated challenges: 1) how to better enable the ubiquitous smart equipment to connect and communicate with each other (the Interconnection Principle); 2) how to better analyse and leverage the collected immense amounts of data and information (the Information Transparency Principle); 3) how to better support human beings to make decisions and conduct difficult tasks (the Technical Assistance Principle) and 4) how to better take advantage of decentralized architecture for decision making (the Decentralized Decisions Principle). While the previous EIS special issue on ‘Industry 4.0 and Big Data Innovation’ more focused on the research progresses of Big Data technology in Industry 4.0, this special issue takes a further step for providing the readers with the latest advances in information technologies for industry 4.0, by considering above fundamental motivations. Based on the submissions in ‘the 5th International Conference on Enterprise Systems (ES 2017)’ and an open call for papers procedure, we selected 8 representative research articles for publication after rigorous peer-review processes. Towards those above-mentioned challenges, these 8 articles propose promising solutions and excellent literature reviews for supporting industry 4.0 to better change the traditional manufacturing. Here, we provide an integrative perspective of this special issue by summarizing each contribution contained therein. Drones, namely unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are a highly efficient and low-cost means of transport in recent years. In the scenario of e-Commerce, delivery packages using drones will deem play an essential role. However, delivery with drones has some limitations in the actual operation. To overcome this challenge, Li et al. in the invited paper (Continuum approximation models for joint delivery systems using trucks and drones) focused on exploring the economics related to the joint delivery system using trucks and drones. Transportation distances and costs are approximated as simple functions using continuum approximation (CA) methods, which can keep critical issues and trade-offs in focus. The main contribution is to develop cost models using the derived methods and gain a greater understanding of delivery activities by focusing on the trade-offs between major components, which are valuable for decision-makers: choose economical delivery mode based on ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS 2020, VOL. 14, NO. 4, 402–405 https://doi.org/10.1080/17517575.2019.1651399