Digital Technologies as Enabling Strategies for the Sustainable Transition of Productive Systems

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that “technology” has slowly but progressively pervaded our lives. Even in production processes, technology is no longer new, and it cuts across all sectors, from industrial to agro-forestry, to the point of conditioning the personal lives of each and every one of us.

The focus on a more sustainable economy represents awareness on the part of entrepreneurs and their stakeholders.

We are now living in a double transition, dealing with both digital–technological and sustainability needs (often defined as the Twin Transition).  In this era, managing production processes requires a strong ability to revisit business models as well as the concept of production itself to be contextually based on the satisfaction of benefits coming from three different strategies: (a) well-balanced economic, social, and environmental interactions, (b) industrial symbiosis, and (c) circular models.

Digital technologies must first be understood and evaluated in order to support and respect the “DNSH principle”. Indeed, digital technologies can create new challenges that must be consciously taken into account. Therefore, the objective of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of the current state of the art on applied research and best practices regarding the use of digital technologies to support production processes in order to move them towards a more robust "global sustainability" vision as far as companies themselves, their stakeholders, and the social communities as a whole are concerned.

We encourage the presentation of both practical research from case studies and empirical research from any theoretical perspective that falls broadly within one of the following areas:

• Positive and negative technological and management impacts of digitalization in production systems;
• Methods to assess and measure the impacts generated by production activities (e.g., including LCA and/or multi-criteria approaches);
• Social issues still open in the digitalization of production systems;
• Large or specific implications of regulatory issues, including product/process certification tasks;
• Needs and tools for certification tasks from an integrated sustainable perspective;
• Digital twin models to provide planning tools for designing and evaluating integrated sustainability applications;
• Digital tools to monitor and manage sustainability aspects in current production systems;
• Any practical case study from different productive sectors;
• Ways to combine technology, computer science, and biology in biointelligent production systems and processes;
• The impact of digital technologies on people’s work and their potential to increase inclusion and diversity;
• Techno-ethical considerations related to the introduction of digital technologies.

Dr. Pasqualina Sacco
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Mazzetto
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• sustainable digitalization
• sustainable production systems
• twin transition