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The advances in Industry 4.0 provide both challenges and opportunities for digital manufacturing and assembly systems. This paper first addresses the state-of-the-art readiness for Industry 4.0 concerning assembly and manufacturing systems through a literature review of the relevant papers recently published. Then it assesses the challenges faced nowadays by assembly and manufacturing systems. Third, it focuses on the most promising future developments and evolution of such production systems as well as their digitalisation. Finally, this manuscript illustrates the content of the papers selected for this special issue. Through the study presented in this special issue, valuable contributions to both theory and application in this area have been achieved, and a useful reference for future research is given.