International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

Fourth industrial revolution also called Industry 4.0, is considered as the most discussed topics among experts nowadays. The excitement for the Industry 4.0 goes two ways. First says that the fourth industrial revolution deals with the question of “a priori” and not “ex-post”. Organizations and research institutions gain opportunities for active building and forming of the future. Secondly, it has significant economic impact, which promises much higher operational efficiency, as well as development of brand-new business models, services and products. At the moment, organizations are able to run without elements of the Industry 4.0, but only for a limited time. They have to look for a path of further development, and that is digitalization in each field of business. With help of human resource management, organizations are able to form skills, abilities, behaviour and attitude of employees in order to achieve the targets of organization. Human resources represent significant factor for competitive advantage in the knowledge economy. In the Industry 4.0 considering human resource management, managers have to mainly focus on supporting of innovation and learning in the organization. The main goal of this article is to identify changes in methods and techniques during realization of human resource management in the context of the impact of fourth industrial revolution in theory, based on research of available scientific literature. Attention is mainly focused on selected functions of human resource management like job design, staffing, training and performance appraisal

Examining the effects of the technological components of Industry 4.0 on the structure of companies, one is reminded of an organizational concept that was popular at the turn of the Millennium: the Virtual Corporation (VC). As early as 1993, the American authors William Davidoff and Michael Malone proclaimed the “virtual revolution”. For them, the decisive building block for the formation of a new economic system was the Virtual Corporation. The literature attributed to this concept the ability to solve the problems of large companies (such as inflexibility) and small enterprises (such as poor economies of scale) simultaneously and to combine the best features of both extremes of company size. This article discusses, which prerequisites for the implementation of VC, then mostly dreams of the future, are given today and how the concept of the VC can complement Industry 4.0 and serve as a role model on an organizational level.

Large amounts of liquidity flow into several precious metals every day. Investment decisions are mainly based on predicting the future movements of the instrument(s) in question. However, high frequency financial data are somewhat hard to model or predict as stochastic processes and many other random factors are involved. It would be valuable information for the investor if he or she knew which precious metals were quantitatively more predictable, that would also be a good basis for more robust trading decisions. The objective in this study is to build predictive models on high frequency precious metal data and compare predictabilities of different metals using only past price and volume values which should be a basis for robust trading decisions. The data used consist of various frequencies from 1-minute to 4-hour covering a period of almost 20 years for each instrument and frequency. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Gradient Boosted Decision Tree (XGB) methods are applied. Comparable results are achieved

This publication analyzes the opportunities, problems and challenges associated with the implementation of Industry 4.0 in Bulgarian industrial enterprises in condition of a dynamic changing competitive environment and extending digitalization. An analysis is made on the base of the four fundamental principles that are used for application of solutions related to the implementation of Industry 4.0 and that influence on the organizational activities in all functional areas in the industrial enterprise. Various industrial sectors are analyzed to identify the trends, problems and challenges of the introduction of Industry 4.0 in manufacturing activities. Opportunities for improving their competitiveness are identified by means of using the principles and advantages of the modern digitalization. Up-to-date statistics and various methods for analyzing of the existing information are used. The specifics of development of the leading sectors in Bulgarian economy  are identified. The results show that there is a growing number of Bulgarian industrial enterprises focused on deploying Industry 4.0 to reach new higher levels of productivity, quality and efficiency. This is a new approach in seeking favorable opportunities for their further sustainable development and competitiveness. Some fundamental problems, challenges and barriers in industrial enterprises, in the process of introduction of digitalization in the industry are discussed, which hinder the fast pace of their development. As a result of this analysis are presented some appropriate solutions.

The article attempts to determine the level of use of methods increasing the security of information resources among the SME sector enterprises declaring the use of information security risk management methods. Research was carried out to determine the scope of use of risk management methods in the aspect of actions taken in the area of security of the intangible assets. Also the so-called “human factor” in the information protection process was taken into account. An attempt was made to determine how business entities use risk assessment in any form and how many of them use (and to what extent) the recommendations described in the ISO/IEC 27005 standard.

The use of mathematical models of control processes in foundry such as: K-test and Chemical spectral analysis is a good set of mathematics (thermal conductivity theory) and theoretical physics (first-order phase transition) are important elements for ensuring high quality castings in micro-foundries.
The idea of estimating the overheating of a liquid metal alloy based on the appearance of a curing process upon filling has been developed. These control processes combined with zone refining are an important opportunity to create a waste-free foundry in a circular economy in Industry 4.0.

The concept of a circular economy is a model of production and consumption that minimizes waste in the environment. It brings benefits not only to nature but also to the economy and society as a whole. This is a model aimed at extending the product life cycle. When a product reaches the end of its life, the materials of which it is composed continue to be reused. This is repeated many times to minimize waste disposal. In practice, this means sharing, borrowing, reusing, repairing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. The bio- economy in the European Union is growing much faster than the rest of the economy, which will lead to the creation of more jobs and the continuation of the digital transformation of the European economy. Bio-economy covers all sectors and systems that use biological resources. It is one of the largest and most important sectors of the EU and includes agriculture and forestry, fisheries, agro-food, biomass and bio-based products. Its annual turnover is about 2 trillion euros, and it employs about 18 million people. Bio-economy is also a key area for stimulating growth in rural and coastal areas. The new bio-economy strategy fits in with the Commission’s efforts to further boost jobs, growth and investment. It aims to improve and expand the sustainable use of renewable sources to overcome global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development. The purpose of the study is to analyze the situation in Bulgaria for the development of the bio- sector in terms of production capacity, potential for growth of the bio-production sector, to study the conditions, difficulties and prospects for the development of exports of bio- products. The analysis will serve to evaluate the opportunities for Bulgarian bioeconomy development, the innovation encouraging measures in this sector and the diversification of this sector. The results of the Bioeconomy research distinguish strategic areas: sustainable consumption and production through responsible consumers and producers; knowledge society through information development and training; government to help adapting to new business realities; climate change and energy; sustainable transport and mobility; conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity and natural resources; public health and risk prevention with an emphasis on environmental quality; demography and migration and social inclusion; challenges in the field of sustainable development; global poverty reduction.

Much of the technical equipment in energy, industry, commerce and the public sector (electronic equipment, electric motors, furnaces, chargers, uninterruptible power supplies, etc.) are inherently non-linear loads and are sources of harmonic distortion of currents. Non-linear loads adversely affect all components of the power system: they increase losses in transformers and electric motors by thermal loading their windings, increasing dielectric and/or mechanical losses and generally reduce the efficiency of the electrical system. The paper deals with operation of a power transformer that supplies combined non-linear load in a public building

Digital platforms for education are one of the newest and most effective online tools for collaboration and knowledge accumulation. The construction industry could benefit from such a platform to prepare a new generation of building entrepreneurs. The webbased platform has many advantages like creating new ecosystems of data, information, knowledge, people, processes and things. Therefore, the article entitled Digital Platform for Building Entrepreneurial Skills and Competitiveness in The Construction Sector presents a modern way of obtaining business skills. It models an affordable, user-friendly digital system for learning and teaching the best practices in the construction industry.

Resource planning in manufacturing companies is crucial in the context of Industry 4.0. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that enable vertical and horizontal integration between different operational and management levels are essential for monitoring process execution through real-time data access and for making decisions according to these data.
The implementation of the ERP system is one of the key indicators highlighted by the European Commission (more than 100 indicators) in the Digital Agenda for Europe (A Europe 2020 Initiative), which sets the goals for the growth of the European Union by 2020. It is important to make an analysis of the state of implementation of the ERP systems in the Republic of Croatia. We researched within the metalworking industry in Croatia. Purpose of the research conducted is to determine the state of implementation of ERP systems in metalworking companies and on the compliance of ERP systems with Industry 4.0 and to investigate the opinions of ERP system users on the extent to which the ERP system they use meets the requirements of Industry 4.0.
The main objective of our paper is twofold: to present the features of modern ERP systems in the Industry 4.0 framework and to present the results of our research.

Industry 4.0 is changing the structure and scope of accountants’ qualification profile by imposing new challenging requirements regarding their skills and competences. The paper is inspired by the increasing digitalisation of businesses and the impact of technology innovations and their augmented application on the accounting higher education. The aim of the research is to outline and discuss the challenges for accounting educators due to the required knowledge and skills from graduates in the Industry 4.0 context. A special attention is given to the need for building strong and effective communication and information links with the business partners and  professional bodies. The benefits for universities of becoming part of clusters are also discussed in more details.

Tools, which are used while carrying out of the individual managerial functions are constantly evolving and responding to the changes of outer environment. In current conditions the most significant factor, which effects business environment, is Industry 4.0. It is a phenomenon associated mainly with automatization, digitalization and the Internet of Things. The main aim is to identify changes in the application of methods and techniques in carrying out of the individual managerial functions in the context of the impact of the Fourth industrial revolution on the theoretical level, based on a research of available scientific literature. The results of the theoretical research point to the fact that the topic of industry 4.0 is new in the context of management, and the research does not have any influence on the individual managerial functions, which are planning, organizing, controlling, human resources management and leadership. Most of the scientific work focuses on the field planning, organizing and controlling. On the other hand, not mentioned are the functions like human resources management and leadership, within the effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on the tools and methods, which are used for the implementation.