# Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study
## 4 Results
### Dairy Farming
#### 4.4.2 State and Potential of Industry 4.0 Benefits
Sensor-based health and welfare monitoring and evaluation [105; 106; 107; 108; 109] will improve the quality of welfare management. Additionally, systems of environment monitoring inside and outside the dairy farm may help to reduce environmental impacts. Monitoring systems combined with decision support systems [110; 111; 112; 113; 114] can improve sustainability in other critical topics of dairy farming. **Consistent process orientation:** Biological rhythms characterize dairy farming processes fundamentally (see above \"Flexibilization\"). The processes run continuously and need technical assistance from time to time. Besides the main product, milk, there are other products (calf, meat, manure) that are created in the process and need to be considered in the process management. The structure, standardization, and documentation of dairy farming processes are typically not yet available in a (digital) way that third parties can understand or work with. This makes the use of decision models and their implementation more difficult. Industry 4.0 concepts would offer basic approaches to improve process orientation, especially along the value chain. The grand challenge is adaptation in a biological system with individuals (humans and animals) and technical entities. In terms of its basic structure, the milk sector is predestined for comprehensive information transparency. Traditionally, in dairy production, there exists an exchange of (digital) data based on standards in the field of breeding, quality control, and performance monitoring. Technical sub-systems also use recorded data. However, so far, there is neither a general and open digital data interface within the value chain nor negotiated rules to share these data fairly [115]. Not infrequently, the different systems of one manufacturer do not have the necessary information transparency yet. The exchange of digital data along the whole value chain of dairy production (inclusive of all by-products) opens options for new business and has much potential to improve the efficiency and sustainability of the process by recognizing and answering the long list of open questions [116]. **Automated knowledge and learning:** AMSs and herd management programs offer great potential for automated knowledge and learning, as animal-specific data series are continuously generated. Numerous scientific papers show the potential for automated knowledge generation through the help of algorithms [109]. The networking of various automatic systems in barns means that there are many approaches in comparison to Industry 4.0 that have so far hardly been used. For example, a measured change in the amount of milk in combination with other individual information could lead to an automatic adjustment of the feeding to individual animals. However, these data are not yet used consistently in the sense of Industry 4.0. The status of cows by law and its ethical implication brings additional challenges for the development and use of algorithms in dairy farming in the field of responsibility and trustworthiness [117; 118]. To obtain data for learning and to offer management services, some companies collect the whole milking information from the AMS by connecting the system to a central server via the Internet. **Collaboration competence:** Digitalization alone demands many new or improved skills by users, and the implementation of Industry 4.0 measures increases this additionally [119]. The complexity, variability, and self-organization of the biological sub-processes in combination with a whole value chain management demands new qualifications for everybody working in this field. Successful cooperation demands at first a common language. Digitally assisted or autonomously managed dairy production demands not only improved skills within the farms and along the value chain but by all related enterprises and institutions surrounding them as well.