Industry 4.0 is becoming more and more important for manufacturers as the developments in the area of Internet of Things advance. Another technology gaining more attention is data stream processing systems. Although such streaming frameworks seem to be a natural fit for Industry 4.0 scenarios, their application in this context is still low. The contributions in this paper are threefold. Firstly, we present industry findings that we derived from site inspections with a focus on Industry 4.0. Moreover, our view on Industry 4.0 and important related aspects is elaborated. As a third contribution, we illustrate our opinion on why data stream processing technologies could act as an enabler for Industry 4.0 and point out possible obstacles on this way.
A recent work developed a framework called Production Assessment 4.0, which aims to support enterprises developing Industry 4.0 use cases. For doing so, they made use of the design thinking approach. After elaborating on the framework and its processes, a section about its evaluation is presented. Production Assessment 4.0 was evaluated in several consulting projects with enterprises. However, no details about, e.g., their data characteristics or their state of Industry 4.0 adoption progress are given @cite_17 .
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Facing a wide range of new technologies and best practices within Industry 4.0, companies are seeking a systematic approach to identify potential application scenarios in their production. Best practices are often customized use cases  generally too specific to apply in a different manufacturing setting right away. The Production Assessment 4.0 presents a pragmatic approach to support companies to develop Industry 4.0 use cases in their factories. The approach follows the Design Thinking method and focus especially on the human role as a key aspect in the use cases designing process.