What is Knowledge in Industry 4.0?
AMM Sharif Ullah
Division of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Kitami Institute of
Technology, 165 Koen-cho, Kitami 090-8507, Japan
E-mail:ullah@mail.kitami-it.ac.jp,
Tel/Fax: +81-157-26-9207
Abstract: This is a fundamental study addressing the
articulation of knowledge from the context of the fourth industrial
revolution (Industry 4.0). Industry 4.0 employs embedded systems (e.g.,
cyber-physical systems) to perform cognitive tasks. These systems cannot
work without applying digitized knowledge. As a result, the digitization
of knowledge-intensive activities (knowledge acquisition,
representation, dissemination, utilization, and management) is critical
for Industry 4.0. Before digitizing the knowledge and
knowledge-intensive activities, a fundamental question arises: What is
knowledge in Industry 4.0? This study answers this question. In doing
so, this study first reviews the definitions of knowledge reported in
the extant literature of epistemology, engineering design,
manufacturing, organization science, information science, and education
science. This study then defines that a piece of knowledge consists of
three elements, namely, claim, provenance, and inference. Such a
definition helps overcome the circularity and ambiguity in the
definitions of knowledge reported so far. This definition results in
four types of knowledge, namely, definitional, deductive, inductive, and
creative knowledge. These types of knowledge are exemplified using some
real-life scenarios relevant to engineering design and manufacturing.
The exemplified pieces of knowledge are also represented by using
knowledge graphs (concept maps) so that the contents can easily be
digitized for human and machine learning. The outcomes of this study are
the fundamentals based on which more sophisticated methods and tools can
be developed to perform the cognitive tasks relevant to Industry 4.0.
Keywords: Industry 4.0; Cyber-physical system;
Knowledge-based system; Engineering design; Manufacturing; Creativity