A critical review of product safety in industry 4.0 applications

Product safety is one of the key successful factors to protect consumer and enhance market competition in manufacturing industries. The number of product inspections has been growing in the past decade but the number of product recalls has been increasing conversely. Product safety is seldom documented in the Industry 4.0 applications as most of researches are focusing on increasing the productivity and monitoring production activities in real time. This paper is sought to evaluate the product safety in the worldwide and discuss the opportunities of applying Industry 4.0 to predict the product safety in new product development process proactively. An overview of product recalls and Industry 4.0 applications will be introduced. Industry 4.0 technological components and inspection methods in manufacturing industrial will be presented. Finally, challenges and opportunities will also be addressed in applying Industry 4.0 model to product safety.