“…Theoretically, introduction of smart factories is supposed to provide immense opportunities of promoting economic, environmental, and social sustainability (de Man & Strandhagen, ; Stock & Seliger, ). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, there are only few qualitative statements concerning environmental performance of smart factories, which mainly focus on illustrating potential improvements in resource and energy efficiency (Waibel, Steenkamp, Moloko, & Oosthuizen, ; Wang et al., ). Therefore, experts have urged the research community to investigate the environmental performance of smart factories (Davies, Coole, & Smith, ).…”