Today’s society is becoming aware that a new economic model of production and consumption must take into account its environmental and social impact. Industries are under increasing pressure from stakeholders to be transparent in reporting the environmental and social impacts of their operations. In this context, sustainable manufacturing must minimize negative environmental impacts and consumption of energy and natural resources, while also being socially responsible and economically viable. That is why the sustainable manufacturing concept is gaining increasing attention both in the research community and in organizations, especially in the industrial sector. However, even today, there is a great diversity of interpretations and ideas associated with this term. Accordingly, this article first presents an overview of the main concepts related to sustainable manufacturing, and metrics to evaluate organizations’ sustainability performance, and then an outlook of current trends. Our work highlights the consistencies and inconsistencies in the research community related to the interpretations of sustainable manufacturing and Industry 4.0, as well as the lack of consensus about the true social impact of Industry 4.0. However, the positive ecological and economic impacts of sustainable manufacturing seem fairly widespread. In this way, sustainable manufacturing practices seem to be reinforced by initiatives within the fourth stage of industrialization – the so-called Industry 4.0 – which offers great opportunities for sustainable manufacturing, thanks to digital transformation.
This chapter aims to explore how lean manufacturing (LM) can leverage Industry 4.0 resources to achieve better industrial performance while achieving cleaner processes. In today's environment, to remain competitive, companies need to incorporate new resources to respond to environmental concerns - especially in the fight against climate change - without compromising efficiency. The goal is not only to clarify and extend the literature on the relationship between LM and Industry 4.0, but also to do so by simultaneously studying the impact on throughput and CO2 emissions reduction. Moving away from the usual separate assessment, the authors propose a comprehensive analysis that allows us to evaluate how LM can establish the right conditions on the shop floor for the development of 4.0 technology-intensive environments, and how these technologies can subsequently be leveraged to enhance the contribution of lean practices to industrial performance and sustainability.
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