Industry 4.0 as an enabler of sustainability diffusion in supply chain: an analysis of influential strength of drivers in an emerging economy

Abstract

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and sustainability are recent buzzwords in manufacturing environments. However, the connection between these two concepts is less explored in the literature. In the current business context, the future generation of manufacturing systems is greatly influenced by the rapid advancement of information technology. Therefore, this study aims to examine the drivers of I4.0 to diffuse sustainability in Supply Chains (SCs). This research identifies the most relevant drivers through the literature and discusses them with area experts. Afterwards, an empirical analysis is conducted to validate the key drivers. Finally, the Grey based DEMATEL method is employed to examine the influential strength of the identified drivers and to build an interrelationship diagram. 'Government supportive policies' and 'Collaboration and transparency among supply chain members' were reported as highly significant drivers of I4.0. This study is an initial effort that investigates the key drivers of I4.0 to achieve high triple bottom line (ecological-economic-social) gains in SCs by taking an example from an emerging economy, i.e. India. This study may help managers, practitioners and policy makers interested in I4.0 applications to diffuse sustainability in SCs.

How do Partners Benefit from IT Use in Supply-Chain Management: An Empirical Study of Taiwan’s Bicycle Industry

“…This would therefore reduce total energy consumption by maximizing the efficiency of SC processes such as scheduling, procurement, order fulfillment, engineering change, and design optimization. Agile manufacturing also promises to offer increased customization, flexibility and quality, reduce manufacturing waste, and decrease the manufacturing lead time [37][38][39][40]105]. Similarly, Gholami et al [106] also found that IT implementation appear to influence the environmental value.…”

“…Just as Dehning et al [80] investigated the financial benefits of adopting IT-based SCMS, they found that higher levels of financial benefits came from higher levels of operational performance. This implies that SCMS implementation contributes information sharing and promotes the transparency and interconnection of processes, which allow partners' coordination, collaboration, integration, optimization, increasing demand orientation, thus enabling produce efficiency, manufacturing flexibility, superior quality, lower manufacturing costs and product customization [31,32,37,38]. Additionally, this new business model based on novel value-creating mechanisms can achieve increasing customer satisfaction, market share and rate of investment [37].…”

“…From the sustainability supply chain viewpoint, sustainable benefits can be obtained from the use of IT or Industry 4.0 related technologies as information systems integration improvement to enhance the supply chain information transparency and processing capability. Such benefits include: transparency of process, machinery, stock, or logistics data to facilitate traceability of commodity flow to increase resource and energy efficiency; reduction of waste, logistics process and delivery errors and damaged goods; shorter set-up and lead times as well as faster machine speed to facilitate faster and more flexible, efficient, and higher quality response to customer demands; reduction of time-to-market in new product design, thus supporting a firm to effectively and efficiently manage operational contingencies and enhance performance [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42].…”

“…According to Beier et al [27], and Kiron and Unruh [28], Industry 4.0 is really an enabler of sustainable development, but the convergence of digital transformation and sustainability remains underdeveloped. Recently, a lot of studies have identified several interlinks between Industry 4.0 technologies and sustainable operations, such as: discussing the influence of sustainable business models [29], exploring the potential impact, opportunities and challenges to sustainable development [30][31][32][33][34], enabling of sustainability [35][36][37], potentially contributing sustainable value creation [38], the effects on lean manufacturing practices for sustainable organizations [39,40], and presenting the dependence power of the determinants for Industry 4.0 implication in the sustainability context [41]. According to Vaio and Varriale [42], by adopting a sustainable supply-chain management (SSCM) perspective, firms tend to focus much more on searching for transparent information, coordination, integration, and effective sustainable practices, thus considering Industry 4.0 and its social, environmental, and economic impact.…”

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Sustainability Practices: A Comparative Automated Content Analysis Approach of Theory and Practice

“…The organizational aspect of sustainability starts with the organizational culture comprising sustainability vision, mission, and values [48]. It is also important that business strategies are sustainable [49] and that the main drivers of I4.0 can generate high triple bottom line profits (environmental-economic-social) in emerging markets, which is becoming a significant factor in emerging markets because they still use unsustainable approaches: child labor, exploitation of workers, use of fossil fuels, inadequate environmental legislation allowing the use of obsolete ecologically questionable technologies and raw materials [50].…”