The applications of Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial management: a science mapping review

With the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, the seamless connection between the physical and digital worlds has been realized. This review paper aims to conduct a science mapping review of IoT applications in industrial management and to identify mainstream research topics, research gaps, and future research directions. Using VOSviewer as a visualization tool, 142 articles retrieved from the Scopus database were quantitatively discussed using scientometric analysis. Additionally, a follow-up qualitative discussion was focused on mainstream research topics, existing research gaps, and future research directions as the main research goals. The results revealed influential findings for the co-occurrence of keywords, journals, countries, authors, and documents analyses. Moreover, it was found that the existing research mainly focused on four main research topics including (1) application of IoT in manufacturing based on cyber-physical systems, (2) IoT-related technologies on logistics and supply chain management, (3) The impact of IoT on business models, and (4) Industrial IoT (IIoT) in the context of Industry 4.0. On this basis, the existing research gaps and future research directions are proposed. This review paper would help relevant practitioners and researchers to better understand the existing body of knowledge and lay the foundation for further research.