Quality 4.0 is an emerging quality management concept, which has been increasingly appreciated due to intensification of competition, continually changing customer requirements, and technological evolution. It deals with aligning the practices of quality management with the emergent capabilities of Industry 4.0 to improve cost, time and efficiency as well as increase product quality. As the future of quality, Quality 4.0 has become a potential choice for enterprises and has attracted increasing attention in recent years. In the literature, many studies have been conducted to investigate Quality 4.0 from different perspectives. They provide valuable insights and interesting research suggestions concerning Quality 4.0. However, the current researches on Quality 4.0 are insufficient in terms of basic concept, architecture design and key technologies. Therefore, this paper tries to improve the concept of Quality 4.0 by clarifying the definition, features and goals of Quality 4.0 based on a comprehensive review of current researches and practices. Then, a basic architecture of Quality 4.0 is presented by including physical layer, edge layer, analysis layer and decision layer. Besides, eight key technologies, i. e., industrial big data, digital twins, machine learning, machine vision, visualization technology, optimization techniques, connect technology, and collaborative technology, are identified to support the implementation of Quality 4.0. Finally, the problems of Quality 4.0 implementation in the Chinese manufacturing industry and the possible solutions to address them are discussed.

Quality 4.0  /  Industry 4.0  /  quality management  /  intelligent manufacturing