Research trends and trajectories in quality management in the age of Industry 4.0 – the current state of knowledge

This study aims to analyse publication activity and identify development directions of scientific research themes in the area of enterprise quality management in the context of Industry 4.0, based on a bibliometric analysis of scientific literature from the Web of Science and Scopus databases up to the end of 2023. The article employs a systematic literature review method. The research included a bibliometric analysis of scientific literature sourced from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Based on a predefined combination of keywords, a set of articles was selected, which – after initial screening and justified exclusions – was accepted for further analysis. The study enabled the characterization of, among others, publications production, sources of publications, time of publication, main authors and leading topics. Next, a word co-occurrence analysis and longitudinal thematic map analysis were conducted to examine the research field in depth and to identify research trends and trajectories in quality management in the age of Industry 4.0. The conducted research shows that the number of publications on quality management in the context of Industry 4.0 is constantly growing, and the topics are progressively evolving towards issues such as: the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, digitalization. These technologies are seen as key enablers for enterprises to cope with the growing uncertainty and complexity of the business environment and to achieve a competitive advantage. The study indicates that AI, IoT, big data analytics, and sustainable development are among the most rapidly growing and prominent themes in the literature on quality management in the Industry 4.0 context. Identifying research gaps and potential directions for scientific development in the field of quality management may contribute to the creation or improvement of new tools, approaches, and concepts including those based on Industry 4.0 technologies.