Link Between Sustainability and Industry 4.0: Trends, Challenges and New Perspectives

Abstract

The increasing number of studies that underline the relationship between industry 4.0 and sustainability shows that sustainability is one of the pillars of smart factories. Through a bibliometric performance and network analysis (BPNA), this research describes the existing relationship between industry 4.0 and sustainability, the strategic themes from 2010 to March 2019, as well as the research gaps for proposing future work. With this goal in mind, 894 documents and 5621 keywords were included for bibliometric analysis, which were treated with the support of Science Mapping Analysis Software Tool (SciMAT). The bibliometric performance analysis presented the number of publications over time and the most productive journals. The strategic diagram shown 12 main research clusters, which were measured according to bibliometric indicators. Moreover, the network structure of each cluster was depicted, and the patterns found were discussed based on the documents associated to the network. Our findings show the scientific efforts are focused to enhance economic and environmental aspects and highlights a lack of effort relating the social sphere. Finally, the paper concludes the challenges, perspectives, and suggestions for the potential future work in the field of study relating to industry 4.0 and sustainability.

Quo Vadis Industry 4.0? Position, Trends, and Challenges

“…The results presented are in line with other similar studies [17]- [21], while the critical discourse on the challenges revealed additional insights and directions. These challenges are mainly based on the fact that digitized and adequately modelled data/information is at the disposal for being analyzed and used to support all functions associated with the different phases of the life cycle of the physical and cyber-part of a RAMI 4.0-compliant solutions.…”

“…Table 1 summarizes some of the most critical issues to implement Industry 4.0 and points out the main actions required to address each one of these challenges. The findings below are in line with similar systematic literature reviews [17], [19]- [21].…”

“…The time interval chosen for this search was between 2013 and 2020, resulting in a dataset containing 13.636 documents after the removal of duplicated entries. The size of the dataset is, therefore, larger than what is analyzed in similar studies, e.g., [17]- [21].…”

“…ACM and Springer, that are not directly accessed. Such analyses utilizing these document repositories is common in text-based analysis [17]- [21]. Specifically, documents were selected containing the case-insensitive as well as variations of keywords: "industry 4.0" OR "industrie 4.0" OR "fourth industrial revolution" OR "I4.0", as illustrated in Figure 1.…”

“…Several challenges/barriers related to Industry 4.0 [7], [8], [20], [21] and more specifically ICPS [2]- [4] have emerged. Combining such challenges, with the results of this analysis but also the essential information issued in the Multi-Annual Plans (MASPs) and Strategic Research and Innovation Agendas (SRIAs) of Industrial Associations and Platforms like [26], [27], [29], enables the calibration of such insights.…”