Since its introduction in 2011, industry 4.0 has been coined the“4th industrial revolution” following mechanization, industrialization and IT/automation as the first three, and represents the current trend of automation technologies (cyber‐physical systems, internet of things, cloudcomputing, etc.,) in the manufacturing industry, with their potential for disruption of the manufacturing paradigm as we know it. However, the effect and role of industry 4.0 on the design and development of the new products to be manufactured in industry 4.0 facilities is not clear. This research presents a literature review to; 1) understand the concept of industry 4.0 from an implementation (state of practice) viewpoint, 2) learn about approaches and considerations currently deployed for developing products to be produced in manufacturing plants progressively transforming into industry 4.0 environments. Results reveal that the potential of industry 4.0 is underexploited within product design and development, especially in the conceptual stages lacking methods, tools, and approaches.While later stages of the product development (production planning,ramp‐up) have received some attention in regards with optimizing production operations, several publications acknowledge its potential to benefit earlier process stages.