Digital transformation and industrial revolutions in the manufacturing sector: Topic modeling insights

Abstract

Digital transformation presents an application of digital technologies to improve a company’s business results and processes. Digital transformation cannot be done without introducing industrial revolution concepts, such as Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0, mostly in the manufacturing sector. Having in mind that the industry is rapidly changing, it is valuable to analyse the literature and visualize how the industry and research topics are changing from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0. The intention of this paper is to provide an example of topic modeling within the context of digital transformation and industrial revolution in the manufacturing sector, to detect topical issues in the previous period, to point out researchers and Journals specialized in the research field, as well as to observe the research topics that are gaining momentum. This paper presents a topic modeling analysis of articles extracted from Scopus and Web of Science bibliographic databases, published between 2019 and 2025, where the following search terms were used as keywords for the research: “digital transformation”, “manufacturing”, “production”, “digital technologies”, “industry 4.0”, “industry 5.0”. A text analysis of 1745 publications shows that China has the largest number of authors publishing on this topic while the highest number of publications was recorded in 2024. The results also point out that the keywords most commonly used were Industry 5.0, Digital Transformation, and Industry 4.0. In this paper, a total of 15 topics have been detected and explained and a trend analysis has been performed. For the year 2025, three crucial topics have been identified: Innovation-performance, industriometrics and innovative transformation. This paper could be of significance for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers in manufacturing companies to gain a better understanding of digital technologies and industrial revolution concepts and improve the introduction of digital transformation into their business.