**1.2 Evolution of smart manufacturing and quality control**

The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0 revolution (I4.0R), has become a reality today (**Figure 1**). The political debate about the term Industry 4.0 revolution focuses equally on the important and abstract objectives. For its promoters, Industry 4.0 revolution, though coined in Germany is not only about improving Germany's international competitiveness, but also perceived as means for solving some of the urgent global problems for example, climate change that has created new demand for the increased consumption of renewable and non-renewable resources. While some of the problems are specific national challenges such as, labour supply that is ever-changing due to demographic shifts [7, 8], Industry 4.0 revolution is focused on smart products, procedures, and processes (smart production). A key element of Industry 4.0 revolution is, therefore, the Smart Manufacturing (**Figure 1**). Smart Manufacturing or Industry 4.0 revolution are Cyber-Physical Systems, physical systems integrated with ICT components. These are autonomous machines that can make their own decisions based on machine learning algorithms and real-time data capture, analytics results, and recorded successfully past behaviours [9].

The Smart Manufacturing controls the fast-growing complexity, while also boosting production efficiency. Therefore, Smart Manufacturing is about direct communication between man, machine and resources to produce Smart products and services. Furthermore, Smart products know their manufacturing process and

**Figure 1.**

*Chronology of industry revolution. Source: Author's own illustration.*

future applications. Equipped with these types of knowledge and intelligence, these gadgets actively support the production and documentation process. This will create value chain capable of answering questions such as ("*when was the product made, which parameters to be given to product, which destination is product intended for?"*) [10, 11, 13]. These interfaces to smart mobility, smart logistics, and smart grids make Smart Manufacturing an important element of future smart infrastructures. Conventional value chains will thereby be refined, and totally new business models will become established [12, 13].

Industry 4.0 revolution concept, therefore, encompasses not only value creation, but also work organisation, business models and downstream services. It performs this by using information technology networks of production, marketing and logistics. This enables it to capture all resources, production facilities and warehousing systems. The re-organisation thus, extends from the energy supply and smart power grids through to advanced mobility concepts (Smart mobility, Smart logistics) [12, 13]. However, on the technical side the concept is based on integrating Cyber-Physical Systems into production and logistics. In this Smart environment the concept of the Internet of Things (IoTs) and services that were already devised a decade ago have actually now become a reality. This process involves developing people and capital mobility, changing modes of production, consumption, learning, working and leisure, and increasing world-wide competition. In the subsequent subsection, we try to highlight the concept of quality control in Smart manufacturing.
