Over the past 10 years, the concepts and objectives of circular economy have been increasingly detailed and become strategic issues of international, European, and national policies. However, the transition towards circular production models continues to be affected by several barriers and critical factors that make the transition difficult to achieve. The paper tries to design a relationship between sustainable production and lean production, highlighting the opportunity to invest in reverse‐logistics and how Industry 4.0 system represents a breeding ground for circular economy targets application. The aim of the current study is to examine the relationships among sustainable production, lean production, and Industry 4.0 in order to evidence the need to adopt a lean methodology and Industry 4.0 technologies in a sustainable development perspective for companies. Following a holistic vision, the authors summarize the production principles and formulas, which, although in parallel, lead to similar results and therefore represent the pillars of a competitive and sustainable business. In conclusion, exploring the circular economy principles and production chain model, challenges, opportunities, and future outlooks are formulated.

Worldwide manufactures are redesigning supply chains, often outsourcing with the aim of maintaining a competitive advantage and gaining market share. When selecting and purchasing fabrics, firms should actively cooperate with suppliers, to meet customers’ needs. In this view, the supplier selection process plays a key role in keeping a competitive edge in global markets. Therefore, this study proposes a multicriteria decision-making model (MCDM) to ease supplier evaluation and selection. Supply chain operation reference metrics (SCOR metrics) and fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (FTOPSIS) are combined to build a model for supplier selection. The former allows us to conduct a very thorough fact-based analysis of all features in the supply chain, while the combination of fuzzy theory and SCOR model allows us to deal with uncertainty. The main novelty of this method is that it incorporates a consolidated supply chain management criteria within the framework of fuzzy set theory and multicriteria decision-making model (MCDM) facilitating their application into practice. The proposed approach is tested by considering the case of a manufacturing firm in the fashion industry willing to designate the most appropriate supplier within a set of three potential ones.

Despite being rich in cultural heritage, traditional handicrafts require innovation to achieve competitiveness. This study addresses the understanding of innovation in traditional handicrafts for sustainable development. The paper emphasizes the importance and potential advantages of innovation and its synergistic effect with cultural traditions leading to sustainable development. Apart of the explanation of most important issues regarding this topic, publications containing the following keywords selected for the study were identified in the WOS database. A total of 500 different publications from 1975 to 2021 were identified. The database was used for text-mining analyses. The clustering method (data mining) was used. The systematic literature review was carried out with the use of VOSviewer software. This tool was used to identify and analyse clusters and dominant research areas and to identify potential new research directions. This has never been done by any author before. We show that future studies should focus on the issue of measuring incremental innovation in cultural creative industries, especially handicraft since this topic is not enough analysed in the literature. The findings can help academics and practitioners to improve the knowledge about the topic and concentrate on identified priority areas to fulfil the assumptions of sustainable development.