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Abstract
With the worldwide expansion of the digitalization the experts involved in research and industry predict the fourth industrial revolution, often named Industrie 4.0 (I.40), (Industrial) Internet or Internet of Things (IoT). These terms are used today as generic terms and refer to digital transformation of existing business and processes and promising to fundamentally change the way of production and value creation. Many enterprises are confronted with a bundle of new market requirements in a more global and competitive environment. Examples are significant changes in consumer behavior, increasing competition resulting from more market transparency. This endangers their current market position and forces them not only to reshape their product strategy but also to innovate their existing business models and to re-organize their entire company structures. The scope of all efforts must be to identify in time the right business model and maintains or (even better) improves today´s the companies market position and profitability. Important strategic aspects of Industrie 4.0 and Internet of Things are to identify and enable new business model initiatives and to sharpen the company's value proposition and increase the long term revenues and profitability. This paper focuses on searching successful business models enabled by I 4.0/IoT and identifying their target core improvements which can be transferred to other companies. It provides theoretical and practical grounded assistance to corporations that are today primarily engaged in the production industries. One result of the study will be to present a selection of new or improved business models (use cases) enabled by IoT. These use cases will be shown on a level that they can be transferred to other industry sectors.
