The future of purchasing and industry 4.0 : how purchasing can progress and benefit the fourth industrial revolution

Since its announcement in 2011, the number of scientific publications on the fourth industrial revolution (i.e., Industry 4.0) has grown exponentially. Industry 4.0 envisions cyber-physical systems with machine-to-machine communication enabling physically separate plants to communicate and act without human intervention. Despite the major impacts such transition would have on the purchasing function, the supply management literature thus far remains silent on Industry 4.0. This study contributes a conceptualization of how purchasing can progress and benefit the impacts of Industry 4.0. In addition, we formulate several urgent directions of future research and a specific purchasing I4.0 maturity model.