The Impact of Industry 4.0 on Sustainability and the Circular Economy

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the industrial environment has been undergoing a radical transformation due to the introduction of concepts and technologies stemming from the fourth industrial revolution (also known as Industry 4.0). Industry 4.0, as a term which has been increasingly growing in popularity, revolves around the smart manufacturing revolution that is taking place across the manufacturing sector and beyond. Within the domain of this umbrella term, areas such as: cyber physical systems (CPS), Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics/big data for business intelligence, data science, artificial intelligence (AI) and much more, are encompassed. There is a consensus among scholars and industrialists that Industry 4.0 offers significant opportunities for sustainability, with a view to generate significant economic, environmental, and social benefits, acting as a catalysor towards achieving sustainable development goals at the micro, meso and macro levels. In particular, Industry 4.0 carries the synergistic potential to bring a new set of opportunities for the implementation, integration, and operationalization of circular economy (CE), which, as a result, will foster industrial sustainable development.

CE offers greater security of material supply, improved productivity, the reduced depletion of natural resources, lower CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and reduced pollution and waste, as an emerging sustainability paradigm. The urrent literature includes a wide variety of CE models, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) contributions to facilitate CE implementations across various industries, including the manufacturing industry. Different strategies have been proposed to support the transition from a linear economy to a CE through the responsible and cyclical use of resources for sustainable development. In principle, it includes closed-loop supply chain strategies designed to reuse, remanufacture, refurbish, recycle, minimize, eliminate, share, and optimize material and energy use, while maintaining firm profitability. However, the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies and concepts with sustainability, and in particular with the CE, is a fruitful area with many unknowns to be explored.

This Special Issue aims to reveal the high potential of Industry 4.0 in supporting implementation, and the integration of sustainability and CE practices in the industrial domain. In line with this aim, research contributions that focus on the identification of relationships, synergies, complications and challenges between Industry 4.0, sustainability and CE concepts are particularly encouraged. Hot research areas include, but are not limited to:

• The relationships between the I4.0 (and its subsidiary technologies) and the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, and their specific indicators, e.g., energy consumption, emissions, health and safety, etc.
• I4.0 concepts and models for facilitation and/or catalysis of industrial implementation of sustainability and CE
• The enablers and barriers/complications to the adoption of I4.0-based sustainability and CE
• I4.0-based decision making models for integration, and the improvement of organizational and supply chain sustainability
• I4.0 and industrial sustainability performance measurement
• I4.0 and its role in sustainable supply chain management, including closed-loop supply chains and reverse logistics
• I4.0 and its impact on overcoming industrial barriers to adoption of sustainability and CE practices
• I4.0 and associated response strategies to industrial sustainability issues (e.g., security of supply, occupational health and safety etc.) introduced by the COVID-19 pandemic
• Sectoral, regional and/or empirical insights on implementation, realization and operationalization of I4.0 concepts-based industrial sustainability and CE
• Sustainable manufacturing and I4.0

Dr. Kapila Liyanage
Dr. Ali Bastas
Guest Editors

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• Industry 4.0
• sustainability
• circular economy
• digitization
• smart manufacturing
• cyber physical systems
• Internet of Things
• big data analytics
• triple-bottom line
• artificial intelligence
• closed-loop supply chains
• sustainable supply chain management