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Special Issue "Digital Manufacturing and Industrial Sustainability"

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Special Issue Information
Keywords
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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 14 February 2022.

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Melissa Demartini
E-Mail Website
Assistant Guest Editor

Department of Technology and Innovation, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark
Interests: industrial sustainability, operations management, modelling, supply chain management
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Flavio Tonelli
E-Mail Website
Chief Guest Editor

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Energetics, Management and Transportation (DIME), Polytechnic School University of Genoa, 16145 Genova GE, Italy
Interests: industrial sustainability; digital manufacturing; supply chain management; performance management
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, interest on digital transformation has risen significantly in both the academic and the business communities. This is confirmed by the growing number of conferences, journal publications, Special Issues, and websites dedicated to the topic [1].

Digital technologies have been shown to perform a potential role also in developing a resource-efficient industrial system. Their effective adoption can help to deliver reduced costs and improve the sustainability of manufacturing processes. However, these positive benefits are far from guaranteed, and the way in which digital technologies favor the transition toward sustainable manufacturing systems has not been analyzed in detail yet, so more conceptual and empirical investigations are required in this field [2].

Having a more efficient industrial base is a key component of the circular economy paradigm. The new business mindset of the circular economy could strongly benefit digital technologies.

Thus, a connection between industrial sustainability, digital transformation, and the circular economy has to be studied, analyzed, and hopefully operationalized in order to promote a different perspective on the organizational and operational systems of production and consumption—one which could be focused on restoring the value of used resources [3]. It can certainly be argued that innovative technologies have the capability to pave the way for industrial sustainability and circular economy principles, for instance, by tracking products post-consumption in order to recover components. However, due to the very recent emergence of these ideas, the relationship between industrial sustainability and its digital manufacturing counterpart has not been widely explored by scholars and practitioners, and the two topics have largely been analyzed separately.

The objectives of this Special Issue are to provide a snapshot of the status, potential, challenges, and recent developments of digital manufacturing and industrial sustainability system (i.e., a firm or a network of them [4]) and to open a discussion for new ideas.

We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as review articles that will further stimulate the continuing efforts to improve the current investigations within the field.

Prof. Flavio Tonelli
Dr. Melissa Demartini
Guest Editors

References

Chen, D., Heyer, S., Ibbotson, S., Salonitis, K., Steingrímsson, J.G., Thiede, S. Direct digital manufacturing: Definition, evolution, and sustainability implications (2015) Journal of Cleaner Production, 107, pp. 615-625.
Demartini, M., Evans, S., Tonelli, F. Digitalization technologies for industrial sustainability (2019) Procedia Manufacturing, 33, pp. 264-271.
Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, A.B., Jabbour, C.J.C., Godinho Filho, M., Roubaud, D. Industry 4.0 and the circular economy: a proposed research agenda and original roadmap for sustainable operations (2018) Annals of Operations Research, 270 (1-2), pp. 273-286.
Demartini, M., Bertani, F., Tonelli, F. AB-SD hybrid modelling approach: a framework for evaluating industrial sustainability scenarios (2019) Studies in Computational Intelligence, 803, pp. 222-232.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Circular economy and digital solutions
Digital manufacturing and industrial sustainability
Industry 4.0 principles and digital technologies for sustainable production systems
Enabling technologies for sustainable production systems
Industrial case studies

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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Open AccessArticle

Measuring the Effects of Automatic Replenishment on Product Availability in Retail Stores

Goran Avlijas

Vesna Vukanovic Dumanovic

and

Miljan Radunovic

Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1391; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031391 - 29 Jan 2021

Viewed by 572

Abstract

Maintaining product availability is one of the biggest challenges in retail business because it directly relates to lost sale and decrease in customer loyalty. A solution that ensures a more accurate prediction and eliminates costly stock-outs and wasteful overstocks is an automatic replenishment system. The goal of this paper is to measure the impact that the automatic replenishment system can have on product availability in retail business, especially when it comes to specific product and store related risk factors. A large quantitative study measured the performance of manual and automatic replenishment processes in a sample of 85 stores and 95 products of a major retail chain in Serbia. The study concluded that utilization of an automatic replenishment system can reduce stock-outs for the retail chains up to 60%. Specifically, when ordered through an automatic replenishment system, fast-selling products recorded 40% greater availability, products on promotion 48% higher availability, and products in a high-density retail stores 59% higher availability. The findings extend current understanding of automatic replenishment systems, and especially their performance related to high-risk retail conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Manufacturing and Industrial Sustainability)

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Open AccessArticle

Inventory Share Policy Designs for a Sustainable Omni-Chanel E-Commerce Network

Damla İzmirli

Banu Yetkin Ekren

and

Vikas Kumar

Sustainability 2020, 12(23), 10022; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310022 - 01 Dec 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 744

Abstract

This paper studies inventory share policies for sustainable omni-channel e-commerce supply network design by seeking for a good integration policy of online and offline retailers so that the overall supply network reduce its cost, environmental negative impacts by the decreased number of shipments from the main depot, and increase its responsiveness. By the recent advancement in information technologies and internet use, e-commerce practice gained popularity also to keep up with the competitive environment. The increased competitive supply chain environment has revealed the business-to-business (B2B) concepts enabling business applications between companies. Strategic alliance is a partnership concept realized between two or more organizations ensuring that stages are managed with consideration of the welfare of the others in the whole network. By considering that there are inventory share policies between stages, we accept the existence of strategic alliance implementation in the network, aiming to increase total network flexibility and profitability as well as sustainability in the network. In the study, we research inventory share policies towards strategic alliance concept to have a network design with a decreased negative effect of demand uncertainty and increased profitability in the network. By inventory share policies, businesses share their current inventories with the others so that transportation cost and CO₂ emission caused by traffic intensity is decreased in the network. We propose six inventory share policy combinations and optimize the (s, S) inventory levels under those policies by minimizing total network cost. We utilize the simulation modeling approach for the modeling purpose. We compare the policy results based on the total network cost, the total number of shipments completed from the main warehouse, and total lost sale cost, etc., at the optimal levels and suggest the best policy design. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Manufacturing and Industrial Sustainability)

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Review

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Open AccessReview

A Survey on the Usage of Blockchain Technology for Cyber-Threats in the Context of Industry 4.0

and

Sustainability 2020, 12(21), 9179; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219179 - 04 Nov 2020

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1588

Abstract

A systematic review of the literature is presented related to the usage of blockchain technology (BCT) for cyber-threats in the context of Industry 4.0. BCT plays a crucial role in creating smart factories and it is recognized as a core technology that triggers a disruptive revolution in Industry 4.0. Beyond security, authentication, asset tracking and the exchange of smart contracts, BCTs allow terminals to exchange information according to mutually agreed rules within a secured manner. Consequently, BCT can play a crucial role in industrial sustainability by preserving the assets and the environment and by enhancing the quality of life of citizens. In this work, a classification of the most important cyber-attacks that occurred in the last decade in Industry 4.0 is proposed based on four classes. The latter classes cover scanning, local to remote, power of root and denial of service (DoS). BCT is also defined and various types belong to BCT are introduced and highlighted. Likewise, BCT protocols and implementations are discussed as well. BCT implementation includes linear structure and directed acyclic graph (DAG) technology. Then, a comparative study of the most relevant works based on BCT in Industry 4.0 is conducted in terms of confidentiality, integrity, availability, privacy and multifactor authentication features. Our review shows that the integration of BCT in industry can ensure data confidentiality and integrity and should be enforced to preserve data availability and privacy. Future research directions towards enforcing BCT in the industrial field by considering machine learning, 5G/6G mobile systems and new emergent technologies are presented. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Digital Manufacturing and Industrial Sustainability)

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