The APMS Conference & IFIP WG5.7 in the 21st Century: A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

The APMS conference and IFIP WG 5.7 community can proudly look back at a rich history of research and practical impact in the field of production and production management. However, in the light of the recent disruptions of the field, often summarized under the terms Industry 4.0 or Smart Manufacturing, it is critical to assess recent research trends and changing key topics within the community to enable informed decisions about the future directions of the conference. This paper takes a critical look at 1,428 published papers from the APMS proceedings that are available on Scopus and derives key insights through a bibliometric study. A special focus is put on the last five years to reflect the recent effects of digital transformation on the driving topics of the conference. The results show the emergence and dominance of Industry 4.0 among the recent topics, but also provides evidence of established topics, such as sustainability, remaining relevant. Overall, the study provides a wealth of information that provides the foundation for forward looking discussion among the community members.

Digital transformation as a strategy to reach sustainability

“…Additionally, about 60% of the publications included in this review did not report any specific geographical context. This can be since these manuscripts are literature reviews or conceptual papers mainly (Abreu et al , 2019; Broadbent and Cara, 2018; Dakhnovich et al , 2019; Fritzsche et al , 2018; Heilig et al , 2017; Jara et al , 2018; Junge, 2019; Kar et al , 2019; Kathan et al , 2016; Keepers et al , 2019; Kohnke, 2017; Madhusudanan et al , 2016; Meuer et al , 2019; Nøhr et al , 2019; Pappas et al , 2018; Patón-Romero and Piattini, 2017; Patsavellas and Salonitis, 2019; Ruspini, 2019; Salminen et al , 2016; Savastano et al , 2019; Seebacher and Schüritz, 2017; Vobugari et al , 2017a, b; Weiss et al , 2019; Zheng et al , 2019). Nevertheless, 5 publications out of the 36 can illuminate further research on sustainability and digital transformation.…”