Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS

2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,

The Supply Chain 4.0 in Moroccan automotive companies: a

state of art.
Abdellah Sassi11*, Mohamed Ben Ali2, Hassan Ifassiouen2, Kenza Sahaf2 and Said Rifai2
1
Industrial Engineering, ENSEM school of Engineering, University Hassan II, Casablanca, Morocco.
2
LMPGI Research Laboratory, ESTC High School of Technology, University Hassan II, Casablanca, Morocco

the developing countries such as Morocco, even if the

Abstract
Now more than ever, improving the efficiency of a company’s
supply chain has become an asset for maintaining a competitive
advantage also to meet the overall sustainability challenges
related to the environmental pillar that must have a positive
effect on the environment such as minimizing greenhouse gas
emissions, for Moroccan companies, the integration of the
industry 4.0 enabling technologies can improve and give a new
impetus especially for the automotive industry. The success of
this integration begins with the study of the industry 4.0
technologies and the supply chain 4.0 and their impact on
automotive companies’ performance. The present study is based
on a systematic literature review using quantitative and
qualitative collected data, a statistic method will be applied on
the current literature, in the international and national scales, to
study and make further use of the major writings on the subject
of this communication, especially in Morocco and similar
developing countries by presenting the number of articles
published so far also the main definitions and aspects treated by
these studies, to provide a global vision on the current literature
and encourage more searches to fill the gap, since the Moroccan
industries don’t give the necessary importance to this topic.
Keywords: Supply Chain 4.0, Industry 4.0, Automotive industry,
Morocco
automotive sector in this given country is the most
powerful and successful industry reaching the top list of
the exportation nationally and the first producer of
passenger cars continentally and 24th on an international
scale. [2]
The objective of this paper is to present a systematic
review of the literature on the main writings on this topic
at global and national levels to help filling the gap about
this topic and to provide a ground for future researches to
extend its literature.
The rest of this document is structured as follows. Section
2 presents a review of the literature, section 3 the
methodology of the study and section 4 dedicated to the
results, furthermore section 5 Conclusion.
2. A state of art
2.1 Industry 4.0
The world has experienced four industrial revolutions, as
shown in Figure 1.

1. Introduction
Under the current circumstances due to the Covid-19 virus,
to maintain a competitive advantage, supply chains need to
become smarter and all the researchers emphasised the
need for smart supply chains (Supply Chain 4.0), for that
its processes were receiving pressure, in environmental
terms, to improve the levels of sustainability, According to
J. O. Strandhagen and L. R. Vallandingham [1], the
sustainability theoretical definition is a concept in a
company that is related to three important pillars, namely,
environmental, social, and economic, and the intersection Fig. 1 Industrial revolution. [3]
betwenn these pillars have a positive effect on the
environment and provide and increased competitive ability
and a long-term benefits.
The automotive industry is one of the most important
business sectors in the world, although it is not the focus
of much research on intelligent supply chain especially for
*
Corresponding author: abdellah.sassi@ensem.ac.ma 49
 Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,
2.2 Supply Chain 4.0 3. Methods

3.1 Method steps

A systematic literature review on Industry 4.0 and logistics
is conducted, an appropriate sequence of steps for a
systematic literature review includes:

1- Inspection and dissection of documents

2- Collecting observations
3- Grouping of selected documents
4- Synthesis of studies

3.2 Studies’ objective

Identify important articles aligned with key areas of
logistics to provide an overview of existing research areas
under the umbrella of Industry 4.0 and logistics and the
automotive industry.

3.3 Descriptive statistics of articles

q Scopus was chosen because of its worldwide reputation

in the academic world.

q The selection of appropriate keywords provides a

Fig. 2. The improvement levers of Supply Chain 4.0 correspond to six main value drivers.
[4]
Supply Chain 4.0 will affect all areas of supply chain
management. This is evident in the way that the main
levers for improvement in Supply Chain 4.0, shown in the
outer circle in Figure 2, correspond to the six main value
drivers (the inner circle). ultimately, the improvements
enable a step change in service, cost, capital and agility
2.3 Automotive sector in Morocco
The Moroccan automotive industry has developed, in
terms of exports, this industry claims the first place by
presenting, in 2018, 26% of national exports and plays an
important role in job creation with 27%, on an African
scale Morocco is the first producer of passenger cars and
the 24th on an international scale, and due to the
perspectives that foresee the increase of the production
capacity (700. 000 units by 2023), this would allow the
country to further strengthen its position in the automotive
industry on a regional and international scale. [2]
Academic researchers lack articles dealing with this topic,
which needs to be treated with great importance in order to
keep up with the changes and competitive challenges in
the world.
significant focus for the study theme. The main
keywords are:
• Supply Chain 4.0
• Industry 4.0
• Automotive Industry
q The first point of discussion concerns the results of the
research, which are presented in two aspects:
• The results of the initial search show the
figures after applying the following filters
''Journal papers (articles and articles in press)
only, publications in the last ten years (2012
to 2022), publications in the English only and
subject areas of engineering".
• In the refined search, we add the keyword
"Morocco"
4. Results
On the first aspect, the search was conducted on 1 May
2022 with a total of 954 articles.

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Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,

4.1 Distribution of literature over time (1st Aspect) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60

As shown in Figure 3, the number of publications has
Journal Of Cleaner Production 53
shown a subtle growth showing a significant increase in
the number of publications in 2019, Of the 954 papers International Journal Of
48
selected for this study, 90% of the papers are published Production Research
between the year 2018 and 2022. which shows that the Production Planning And
46
inclination of the engineering and supply chain sector for Control
the adoption and implementation of Industry 4. 0, For the International Journal Of
42
current year, we are already at 74 articles when only a Production Economics
third of the year has passed, showing that research on
Procedia CIRP 33
Industry 4.0 adoption and implementation in Supply Chain
and Engineering continues to grow year on year
IFAC Papersonline 27
Computers And Industrial
24
Engineering
50 100 150 200 250 300

Iop Conference Series Materials

23
No of Articles

193 Science And Engineering

Journal Of Manufacturing
Technology Management 23
145
Advances In Intelligent Systems
21
49 And Computing
54 66 142
88 74
Fig. 4. Distribution of articles among the main journals.
30 51 62
0

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 May
Publication year 2022 4.3 Distribution of literature on Industry 4.0
technologies (1st Aspect)
Fig. 3. Distribution of articles over time.
Figure 5 shows the distribution of the selected literature in
4.2 Distribution of the literature in the main journals the different Industry 4.0 technologies domains, namely
(1st Aspect) Internet of Things (162 papers or 17%), Blockchain
technology (67 papers or 7%), Big Data Analytics (58
The 954 articles selected for this study are published in a papers or 6%), Cyber-P hysical Systems (48 papers or
total of 200 journals. With this wide distribution of articles
5%), RFID (38 papers or 4%), and 3D printers (28 papers
across journals, we considered the top 10 journals. Figure
or 3%). The statistics show that 3D printers and RFID are
4 highlights the journals that contribute 35.6% of the still under-explored areas of research and will require
publications in this study. In addition, we can see that the
attention in the coming years.
top 3 journals contribute 15.5% of the publications. The
journal 'Journal Of Cleaner Production' published the
highest number of research articles (53 articles or 5.55%),
followed by 'Int. Journal Of Production Research' (48
articles or 5%), 'Production Planning And Control' (46
articles or 4.8%).

*
Corresponding author: abdellah.sassi@ensem.ac.ma 51
Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,
Internet of things (IOT) On the second aspect, the search was carried out on 1 May
2022 by adding the keyword "Morocco" and we found a
Blockchain total of 15 articles.
17%
Big Data
7%
Cyber-Physical System 4.5 Distribution of literature over time (2nd aspect)
6% (CPSs)
58% RFID
After adding the keyword "Morocco" to the filters, the
3D printers number of articles published in the last 10 years decreased
sharply to only 18 articles, the growth of published articles
5%
3% Others was shown until 2019 presenting 78% of the articles just in
4% the last 3 years.
An example of articles are as follows:
1- Y. Riahi,, T. Saikouk, A. Gunasekaran, I.
Fig. 2. Distribution of items among Industry 4.0 enabling technologies.
Badraoui, “Artificial intelligence applications in
supply chain: A descriptive bibliometric analysis
4.4 Distribution of literature geographically (1st and future research directions” [5]
Aspect):
2- S.S. Kamble, A. Belhadi, A. Gunasekaran, L.
Ganapathy, S. Verma, “A large multi-group
The comprehensive analysis of the extracted data decision-making technique for prioritizing the big
presented in Table 1 confirms that the elements that have data-driven circular economy practices in the
been taken into account in Industry 4.0 and smart Supply
automobile component manufacturing
Chain have already been adopted by Germany (130). The
industry”[6]
next largest countries are the United Kingdom (120), India
(108), the United States (98), China (73), Italy (66), Brazil 3- Belhadi, A., Kamble, S., Jabbour, C.J.C.,
(50), Portugal (42) and Spain (31), each of which has (...), Ndubisi, N.O., Venkatesh, M.,
published more than 30 papers in the last ten years. “Manufacturing and service supply chain
resilience to the COVID-19 outbreak: Lessons
Table 1. Top 10 countries contributing to Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain. learned from the automobile and airline
industries” [7]
Countries Number of articles
4- Kamble, S.S., Gunasekaran, A., Kumar,
Germany 130 V., Belhadi, A., Foropon, C., “A machine
learning based approach for predicting blockchain
adoption in supply Chain” [8]
United-Kingdom 120
5- Sharma, M., Kamble, S., Mani, V., (...), Belhadi,
A., Sharma, V., “ Industry 4.0 adoption for
India 108 sustainability in multi-tier manufacturing supply
chain in emerging economies” [9]
United States 98 6- Anass, C., Amine, B., Ibtissam,
China 73 E.H., Bouhaddou, I., Elfezazi, S., “Industry
4.0 and Lean Six Sigma: Results from a Pilot
Italy 66 Study” [10]
7- Ghouat, M., Haddout, A., Benhadou, M.,
France 52 “Impact of Industry 4.0 Concept on the Levers of
Lean Manufacturing Approach in Manufacturing
Brazil 50
Industries” [11]
Portugal 42 8- Moufaddal, M., Benghabrit, A., Bouhaddou,
I., “A cyber-physical warehouse management
Spain 31 system architecture in an industry 4.0 context”
[12]

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Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,

9- A. ES-SATTY, R. LEMGHARI and C. OKAR, 0 1 2 3 4

‘’Supply Chain Digitalization Overview SCOR
Advances In Transdisciplinary
model implication’’ [13] 3
Engineering
Computers And Industrial
2
Engineering
6 Advances In Intelligent
1
5 Systems And Computing
EMJ Engineering Management
1
No of Articles

Journal
International Journal Of
1
Automotive Technology And…
2 2 Lecture Notes In Business
1
Information Processing
1 1 1 Picmet 2019 Portland
1
International Conference On…
0 0 0 0
0

Procedia CIRP 1
12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

2
-2
20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

20

ai Publication year
m

Fig. 3. Distribution of articles over the period (Morocco).

4.6 Distribution of the literature in the main journals

(2nd Aspect)
Fig. 4. Distribution of articles among the main journals (Morocco).
The 18 articles are published in a total of 15 journals.
Figure 7 highlights these journals. Furthermore, we can 4.7 Distribution of literature on Industry 4.0
see that the 'Advances In Transdisciplinary Engineering'
published the maximum number of research articles (3
technologies (2nd Aspect)
articles or 17%), followed by all other journals.
Figure 8 shows the distribution of the selected literature
under certain enabling technologies in Morocco, with the
largest number of articles relating to CPSs and Big data
analytics followed by the Internet of Things.

Statistics show that the best-known enabling technologies

are not yet researched or discussed in the Moroccan
literature.

Fig. 5. Distribution of items among Industry 4.0 enabling technologies

(Morocco).

*
Corresponding author: abdellah.sassi@ensem.ac.ma 53
Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,
4.8 Synthesis of the studies " SC4.0 is an advanced framework
with interconnected procedures -Merlino and
4.8.1 The definition of some 4.0 technologies that evolves from detached Sproge, 2017
2 applications to an extended,
Table 2. The Definition of some enabling technologies. coordinated and efficient -Zekhnini, K.
4.0 relationship between SC 2020
Definition Author/s phases"[16, 20]
Technologies
" CPSs achieve the "Smart Logistics is based on the
integration of physical and use of technology to obtain -Uckelmann,
Cyber-
cyber networks through the information on the flow of D.
Physical Douaioui, 3
use of multiple sensors, materials and then on the -Douaioui, K.
System K. 2018
actuators, processing and processing for monitoring, control 2018
(CPS)
control units and and other purposes" [3, 21]
communication devices" [3]
"The Internet of Things is
defined by the ISO/IEC 4.8.3 Definition of Industry 4.0
30141 standard as an
Table 4. Some definitions of Industry 4.0.
infrastructure for
interconnecting physical Definitions Author/s
Internet of Douaioui,
entities, systems, information " Industry 4.0 is the vision of
Things (IoT) K. 2018
sources and intelligent intelligent components and
services capable of machines that are integrated Kolberg, D.
processing information from 1
into a common digital network 2017
the physical and virtual based on proven Internet
world" [3] standards" [17]
" Big data refers to the
Big Data improvement of decision- "The term Industry 4.0
Astill, J. encompasses a variety of
Analytics making capabilities due to
2020 technologies enabling the Oesterreich,
(BDA) the collection and analysis of
large data sets" [14] development of a digital and T. D. and
2
automated manufacturing Teuteberg,
Manufacture of objects from
environment and the F. 2016
a 3D model using a process
L-Kaime, digitalisation of the value
3D painting in which material layers are
H. 2020 chain" [18]
laid down under the precise
control of a computer." [15]
" The convergence of industrial
production and information and
communication technologies,
4.8.2 Definition of Supply Chain 4.0 called Industry 4.0"; "In this
Hermann,
3 publication, the authors name
Table 3. Some definitions of Supply Chain 4.0. M. 2016
three key components of
Definitions Author/s Industry 4.0: IoT, cyber-
physical systems (CPS) and
" Smart Logistics is related to smart factories" [19]
planning and control by intelligent
tools, means and methods, and the -Douaioui, K.
1
degree of intelligence depends on 2018
the applications and methods used"
[3]
5. Conclusion

The most important keywords that have been searched by

various researchers and academics over the last 10 years.
The fundamental advantage of this tool is that it analyses a
huge volume of keywords that have been used in various
studies in the fields of Industry 4.0, supply chain and its

54
Journal of Operations Management, Optimization and Decision Support - JOMODS
2022, Volume 2, Issue 1,
related fields and provides the most important keywords,
which could form the basis for future research. The need
and objective of SLR is to identify as many keywords as
possible that are used or have been used in a similar field
of interest by other academics.
In this study, it was shown that Moroccan industries are
not given the necessary importance to integrate these new
technologies and acquire a competitive vision, especially
during the covid-19 pandemic, while other countries such
as China and the UK have already taken the first steps and
reached the level of integration of enabling technologies
and made their industry digital and their supply chain
smart.
6. Perspectives
Existing literature lacks a common definition of the
Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain 4.0 concepts. Therefore,
their image is still quite unclear especially for Moroccan
automotive companies, this impression was confirmed by
the study that were conducted in this paper. In this regard,
future researches should aim to build a more accurate
understanding of these two concepts. In addition, we
suggest that automotive companies should be accompanied
on their road to Industry 4.0 in a practical manner. This
could be done through concepts and guidelines. Moreover,
an ‘Industry 4.0 Readiness’ could help identify possible
barriers to implementation by naming critical success
factors. Last but not least, the industrial sector described in
this paper need to be put into a wider context, therefore,
future researches should also investigate the other
industrial sectors such as aeronautics and agriculture.
Financing
This work is funded by CNRST (Le Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique et Technologique / National Center
for Scientific and Technical Research)
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