IJCAS

Currently, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is revolutionizing the way firms across different industries do business. Since we are in the fourth industrial revolution, the emerging modern technologies are bridging the gap between the virtual and physical world by using cyber-physical systems. Through Robotic process automation, today's organizations can automate several work operations to reduce the time devoted to exorbitant manual tasks and surges efforts to provide mission-critical tasks. RPA is helping businesses in various aspects such as automatically processing and storing data without human interruption, generating financial statistics without investing an ample amount of time, and performing customer outreach campaigns without exhausting hours in a consumer relationship management system. RPA is a significant innovation within industry 4.0 that enables manufacturers to enhance productivity and efficiency, fulfil customer demands, and persistently drive product innovation to the next level.

 

In general, RPA eliminates the need for humans to execute rule-based activities and repetitive tasks, performs accustomed tasks across multiple systems and applications within an existing workflow, and enhances administrative tasks' efficiency. Therefore, to perform the complex processes and tasks, Robotic process automation trends have been increasingly adopted by business organizations for various processes such as internal communication monitoring, risk exposure monitoring, addressing consumer needs, designing quality, and many others. Robotic Process Automation trends such as hyper-automation, voice-activated automation, edge computing platforms become automatic edge platforms, technology convergence for a fusion of technologies, cyber resiliency, shifting to functional-based business process automation, securing BOTs with zero-trust principles, and much more are shaping the systems of businesses. Through such advancements, companies are seizing immense potential like automating away service line inefficiency, speeding up back-end finance, increasing the efficiency of shipments and distributions, scaling new technology adoption, freeing up resources, lowering risks, proper shoring, reliability, providing retention, reducing errors with higher accuracy, and streamlining processes. The scope of this non-invasive technology extends far beyond the functions mentioned above. With that, RPA combined with other innovative technologies such as AI will leverage unstructured information using machine learning algorithms to develop beneficial and actionable insights.

 

Therefore, RPA acts as a new catalyst in industry 4.0, enabling the automation of routine and complex tasks without the requirement of humans and has led organizations one step closer to developing a completely connected world. Further, it also strengthens supply chains and operations in manufacturing and will persist in expanding rapidly because of its long-term benefits. In this context, this special issue intends to explore the emerging trends in Robotic Process Automation for industry 4.0. We invite researchers, scholars, and practitioners from technology and management disciplines to present novel and innovative solutions for the special issue.

 

• Robotic Process Automation: emerging challenges and opportunities for industry 4.0

• Role of Robotics and automation in the next industrial revolution

• Robotic Process Automation in production and distribution

• Future trends of Robotic Process Automation in business

• Robotics and data analytics for the manufacturing industry

• Robotic process automation and applications for healthcare

• Enterprise Resource Planning and RPA in a new digital age

• Role of industrial robots in intelligent manufacturing

• RPA and digital workforce in the future era

• Emerging innovative technologies for industry 5.0

• Intelligent Robotics process automation for manufacturing

• Recent trends of intelligent technologies in warehouse automation

• Implications of RPA in manufacturing and supply chain industries

• Future of AI, robotics, and automation in industry 4.0

 

Dr. Shakir Khan

Associate Professor, CCIS, Imam University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

E-mail: drshakirkhan78@gmail.com, sgkhan@imamu.edu.sa

 

Dr. Manju Khari

Professor, School of Computer and Systems Sciences,

Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi-67, India

E-mail: manjukhari@jnu.ac.in

 

Dr. Mourade Azrour

Faculty of Sciences and Techniques,

Moulay Ismail University of Meknes, Errachidia, Morocco

E-mail: mo.azrour@umi.ac.ma  

 

Dr. Debanjan Konar

Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Quantum Machine Learning),

Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute (PQSEI),

School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University,

315 Grant St., West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

E-mail: dkonar@purdue.edu, debanjan.konar@fulbrightmail.org

 

Dr. Korhan Cengiz

Department of Computer Engineering,

Istinye University, 34010, Istanbul, Turkey

E-mail: korhan.cengiz@istinye.edu.tr