Dear Colleagues,

In the last few decades, the increasing globalization of markets, and therefore the rising competition between economic agents, has redefined how our economy and industry work, motivating the emergence of concepts associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also known as Industry 4.0) and open innovation, given the demands in terms of efficiency and effectiveness required from the organizations.

On the other hand, environmental concerns, and therefore the need to reach a green economy, have driven society to develop new paradigms and concepts, such as circular economy, eco-innovation, industrial symbiosis, and green products.  

There is an understanding that the combination of these concepts leads us towards reaching sustainable development more rapidly by promoting social and economic development while at the same time ensuring the protection of the environment for the next generations.

Furthermore, it has been recognized that the underlying drivers and technologies of Industry 4.0 (towards agile smart manufacturing) combined with open innovation policies and measures might help to promote circular economy towards a more sustainable industry, which brings the need to tackle and explore the numerous synergies between them.

However, the existing research that addresses and, most importantly, integrates such issues to define a set of measures and policies to reach a more sustainable industry is still very scant. Therefore, there are plenty of research issues needing to be addressed.

In this context, the purpose of this Special Issue is to encourage researchers to explore the synergies between the paradigms of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and sustainability in order to promote and speed up the industrial transition into a circular economy by simultaneously promoting the acquisition of sustainable competitive advantage for organizations to enable them to respond quickly to market needs in the future.

To address this area of research, this Special Issue calls for papers that present applied work regarding these issues. Contributions concerning theoretical approaches are also welcome. Topics of interest include but not are limited to the following:

• Sustainable development approaches in industry;
• Green product development in open innovation;
• Green technologies;
• Green industrial processes;
• Industrial symbiosis;
• Quality 4.0;
• Predictive maintenance;
• Clean production;
• Sustainable life cycle assessment;
• Decision-making in quality management;
• Sustainable industrial energy systems;
• Synergies between Industry 4.0 and circular economy;
• Risk management in open innovation projects;
• Simulation;
• Carbon taxes;
• Cases studies.

Dr. Ricardo Simões Santos
Prof. Dr. João Carlos de Oliveira Matias
Prof. Dr. Vitor Anes
Prof. Dr. Jose Soares
Guest Editors

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• industry 4.0
• sustainability
• decision-making
• open innovation
• clean production
• risk management
• circular economy
• clean production
• industrial symbiosis