Literature Review on the Use of Emerging Technologies for Industrial Process Automation: Analysis of Developments from 2020 to 2024

The manuscript aims to analyze how advances in emerging technologies can improve efficiency in industrial process automation through a systematized collection of manuscripts between 2020 and 2024. The PRISMA methodology was used for the review, initially collecting 2509 manuscripts, leaving 73 important manuscripts published and indexed in EBSCO Host (38), ProQuest (24), ScienceDirect (4), and Scopus (7). The scientific evidence shows that emerging technologies allow solving problems in business processes through automation, identifying operational inefficiency and unproductivity: consumption of resources, time, money, effort, and materials (47%) and human errors (18%). Likewise, the sectors that benefit most from the implementation of automation technologies are “Manufacturing industry, industrial processes” (17%) and “Services and customer relationship management” (11%). In addition, among the new automation technologies, according to the studies, Artificial Intelligence (28%) stands out as the most used due to its effectiveness in various fields, followed by robotics (18%). The results of this manuscript demonstrate implications in the practical context, contributing to the body of knowledge on the use of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT and RPA in the efficiency and transformation of business processes. These findings broaden the understanding of how these technologies replace repetitive tasks and enable process redesign under new strategic and adaptive approaches. These findings show that producing scientific articles on emerging technologies in industrial process automation has experienced significant growth, demonstrating the enormous scientific effort made in recent years.