Artificial intelligence and real-time predictive maintenance in industry 4.0: a bibliometric analysis

• Published in: Ai and ethics (Online) Vol. 2; no. 4; pp. 553 - 577
• Main Authors: Keleko, Aurelien Teguede, Kamsu-Foguem, Bernard, Ngouna, Raymond Houe, Tongne, Amèvi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.11.2022
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer Science; Ethics; Review; Condition monitoring; Deep learning; Ethic; Trustful AI; Bibliometrics; Machine learning; Industry 4.0; Artificial intelligence; Anomaly detection; Prognostics; Predictive maintenance
• ISSN: 2730-5953; 2730-5961
• DOI: 10.1007/s43681-021-00132-6

The purpose of this article is to study the issues of industrial maintenance, one of the critical drivers of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), which has contributed to the advent of new industrial challenges. In this context, predictive maintenance 4.0 (PdM4.0) has seen a significant progress, providing several potential advantages among which: increase of productivity, especially by improving both availability and quality and ensuring cost-saving through automated processes for production systems monitoring, early detection of failures, reduction of machine downtime, and prediction of equipment life. In the research work carried out, we focused on bibliometric analysis to provide beneficial guidelines that may help researchers and practitioners to understand the key challenges and the most insightful scientific issues that characterize a successful application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to PdM4.0. Even though, most of the exploited articles focus on AI techniques applied to PdM, they do not include predictive maintenance practices and their organization. Using Biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and Power BI tools, our main contribution consisted of performing a Bibliometric study to analyze and quantify the most important concepts, application areas, methods, and main trends of AI applied to real-time predictive maintenance. Therefore, we studied the current state of research on these new technologies, their applications, associated methods, related roles or impacts in developing I4.0. The result shows the most common productive sources, institutes, papers, countries, authors, and their collaborative networks. In this light, American and Chinese institutes dominate the scientific debate, while the number of publications in I4.0 and PdM4.0 is exponentially growing, particularly in the field of data-driven, hybrid models, and digital twin frameworks applied for prognostic diagnostic or anomaly detection. Emerging topics such as Machine Learning and Deep Learning also significantly impacted PdM4.0 development. Subsequently, we analyzed factors that may hinder the successful use of AI-based systems in I4.0, including the data collection process, potential influence of ethics, socio-economic issues, and transparency for all stakeholders. Finally, we suggested our definition of trustful AI for I4.0.