As the manufacturing industry is approaching implementation of the 4th industrial revolution, changes will be required in terms of scheduling, production planning and control as well as cost-accounting departments. Industry 4.0 promotes decentralized production and hence, cost models are required to capture costs of products and jobs within the production network considering the utilized manufacturing system paradigm A new mathematical cost model is proposed for assessing the cost-benefit analysis of introducing Industry 4.0 elements to the manufacturing facility, specifically, integrating and connecting external suppliers as strategic partners and establishing an infrastructure for communicating information between the manufacturing company and its strategic suppliers. The mathematical model takes into consideration the bi-directional relationship between hourly rates and total hours assigned to workcentres/activities in a certain production period. A case study, from a multinational machine builder, is developed and solved using the proposed model. Results suggest that though an additional cost is required to establish infrastructure to connect suppliers, the responsiveness and agility achieved resulting from uncertainty outweighs the additional cost.

随着制造业即将实施第四次工业革命，将需要在日程安排，生产计划和控制以及成本会计部门方面进行更改。工业4.0促进了去中心化生产，因此，考虑到已利用的制造系统范式，需要成本模型来捕获生产网络中产品和工作的成本。提出了一种新的数学成本模型，用于评估将工业4.0要素引入到生产中的成本效益分析。制造设施，特别是将外部供应商作为战略合作伙伴进行整合和连接，并建立用于在制造公司与其战略供应商之间交流信息的基础架构。该数学模型考虑了在特定生产时段中每小时费率与分配给工作中心/活动的总时数之间的双向关系。使用提议的模型开发并解决了一家跨国机器制造商的案例研究。结果表明，尽管建立连接供应商的基础架构需要额外的成本，但不确定性所带来的响应能力和敏捷性要超过额外的成本。