Smart Factories Greener Future: A Synergy of Industry 4.0 and Sustainability

Introduction

The industrial landscape has been remodeled with the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies including Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data analytics, blockchain, robotics and automation (Jamwal et al., 2021) (Almusaylim & Zaman, 2019; Piccarozzi et al., 2018). Meanwhile, the importance of sustainability has being highlighted in various global platforms to deal with eco-friendly operations and resource management in diverse sectors. The mutual potential of sustainability and Industry 4.0 has led to the optimization of several smart factory operations, such as energy efficiency, waste reduction, and production process optimization. In Industry 4.0, the interconnectivity of several smart devices has been introduced by the IoT (Alex et al., 2022) (Siddiqui et al., 2022). The exponential increase in the number of smart devices has led to the real-time collection and dissemination of huge amounts of data through sensors (Bilal et al., 2020). Similarly, big data technologies enable real-time data analytics, thus assisting in promoting sustainable practices via informed decisions. Moreover, the blockchain technology, robotics, and automation have been integrated in smart factories and play a vital role in enabling the processes for sustainability (Enyoghasi & Badurdeen, 2021).

For, the intelligent, automated, and interconnected industrial ecosystem, advanced technologies under the umbrella of Industry 4.0 have been leveraged. The transformation of smart factories for sustainability has been only possible by integrating the technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, AI, IoT, and cyber physical systems (Mughal et al., 2024). The enhancement of productivity, adaptability, and operational efficiency while retaining the greener futures goals are the main objective of the synergy of Industry 4.0 and sustainability. Similarly, sustainability goals and practices have become global issues to enhance the processes of resource consumption, waste management, human, ecological, and economic wellbeing. Hence, the synergetic relationship of sustainability and Industry 4.0 technologies has enabled the smart and eco-efficient manufacturing and production processes, leading to the smart factories for greener futures. This has been enabled primarily by real-time data collection by leveraging IoT, automation, and real time data analysis for informed decision making powered by big data technologies and artificial intelligence. This phenomenon reduce waste generation, energy and resource consumption ultimately influencing the overall environmental footprint.

Figure 1.

Synergy of Industry 4.0 technologies and sustainability for smart factories

Supply chain management is also influenced significantly by the advanced technologies and the concept of smart factories (Telukdarie & Bag, 2018). However, certain aspects need to be considered for sustainable industrial trends, such as, societal impact, rules and regulations, standards and policies, and generally the support from the top stakeholders and industrial partners (Harikannan et al., 2021). As a vital part of Industry 4.0 revolution, the blockchain has the potential to increase the sustainability particularly in supply chain management by leveraging its trustworthy properties including the transparency, immutability, accountability, and credibility, which can ultimately impact the energy, data, and resource management at large scale (Esmaeilian et al., 2020). Several researchers have highlighted the role of interconnectivity, automation, robotics, big data analytics and blockchain technology as fundamental concepts in the realm of Industry 4.0 technologies and their role to attain sustainability practices (Jamwal et al., 2021). Figure 1 depicts an overview of the sustainability practices in smart factories and how this effort of sustainability is supported by its synergetic relations with the Industry 4.0 technologies.