Process Excellence and Industry 4.0
The process excellence discipline comprises several philosophies, approaches, and techniques with different headings and origins. The history of the industrial revolutions is related with the beginnings and development of these process excellence approaches. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to explore the evolution of process excellence throughout these four industrial revolutions in order to propose recommendations to successfully cope this new revolution from the process excellence perspective. The chapter reviews publications about the history of the industrial revolutions, technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, and it includes the outputs from a roundtable with Industry 4.0 experts. The chapter concludes that the concept of process and process excellence is essential to implement this new revolution and that the current practices of process excellence most be review in with the perspective of Industry 4.0.