Industry 4.0 is being dubbed the next generation in the manufacturing world. The cloud computing model has introduced so much potential to present technologies by giving them access to unlimited memory, processing, and big data applications. This paper discusses these changes and presents some key challenges in the area.

The paper discusses how manufacturing works via production life cycle management, looking at cyber-physical systems to realize intelligent monitoring and control. The paper initially starts by discussing what cloud and cyber-physical systems (CPS) provide, such as distributed fast computing, flexibility, and security.

Yue et al. compare traditional and new approaches. In terms of computer science, the paper does not discuss any new challenges or new insight into how clouds can help modernize applications. On the other hand, from a manufacturing point of view, I can see the potential of such a paper. By reviewing big business capabilities and how they are using sensors with cyber-physical systems and clouds, the authors present a case for manufacturing research to explore this venue.

This paper paves the way for future work, convincing manufacturing researchers to partner with cloud computing experts. However, the paper would have been much more interesting if a case study had appeared, showing a practical example of both engineering fields. Hopefully, future papers will include this.

As a cloud computing researcher, I think the paper is interesting as it shows how cloud computing is being applied in other fields; however, it does not discuss any of the pending research challenges in security and big data processing, which are going to be immediate problems when cloud computing is used.