The Enabling Role of Industry 4.0 for Customer Centricity and Environmental Sustainability

Dear Colleagues,

The process of globalization, mass customization, and competitive business environment has shown that the “traditional” enterprise is facing new business challenges in today’s turbulent economy (Simmert et al. 2019; Kamble, Gunasekaran, and Gawankar 2018). The demand for shorter delivery time, more efficient and automated processes, higher quality, and customized products is driving companies toward the so-called fourth industrial revolution, which is normally known as Industry 4.0 (I4.0). This innovative paradigm is well known by academics and industrial practitioners, acknowledged as the practice of adopting digital technological solutions in industrial production (Facchini et al., 2019; Strandhagen et al., 2017).

The main objective of I4.0 is to gather and utilize real-time information to achieve vertical integration, horizontal integration, and end-to-end engineering, where functional areas, value chain networks, as well as entire product lifecycles are all connected and linked (Mourtzis et al., 2019; Saucedo-Martínez et al., 2018). The 4.0 paradigm is spreading both in developed and developing countries., even though in different ways and with different results (Choi and Choi, 2018; Weber et al. 2017; Dalenogare et al. 2018; Zheng et al. 2019).

The area of greatest impact of I4.0 is manufacturing, with the topics investigated ranging from improving production processes to optimizing operational performance, developing products or services, and supply chain planning (Zheng et al. 2020). In fact, the scientific literature offers many contributions dealing with the impacts and applications of Industry 4.0 to support production and scheduling activities. Since the introduction of this concept, scholars have focused on understanding the effects of the adoption of digital technologies on the performance of manufacturing departments of manufacturing companies with particular emphasis on increasing process efficiency.

This result is perfectly in line with the principles that gave rise to I4.0, i.e., the wish to effectively impact the efficiency of production processes thanks to the power of digital technologies. Indeed, on the one hand, it is possible to reduce the time and costs in relation to production assets and machines and, on the other hand, the technologies applied to maintenance processes improve the performance and reliability parameters in the production department. However, in recent years, studies about other processes in production and operations management such as internal logistics and supply chain planning have been increasing. Therefore, research developments are shifting more and more from the individual factory to a broader vision of the whole supply chain (Frederico et al. 2019).

Likewise, the aims described in the literature are also changing. This is demonstrated by to the increasing trend of associating the adoption of I4.0 enabling technologies with phenomena focused on meeting specific customer needs (i.e., servitization, product-service systems (PSS) , value co-creation, customer-oriented business model innovation) and the concept of circular economy. These strands, which are developed independently in the literature of I4.0, are increasingly interconnected (Ardolino et al. 2018; Bressanelli et al. 2018; Sklyar et al 2019; Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al. 2018; Nascimento et al. 2019). Therefore, this transformation has led to an increasing emphasis on the importance of the customer and environmental sustainability, promoting the focus on ‘customer centricity’.

Putting the customer at the centre of I4.0 favors the implementation and delivery of increasingly advanced and customized solutions. Indeed, thanks to the great savings achievable in terms of consumption of resources and emissions, I4.0 focuses on the sustainable aspect by stimulating increasingly environmentally friendly processes.

This Special Issue thus aims to promote research concerning the applications and impacts on Industry 4.0, beyond the effects on the production department. In particular, we are seeking studies investigating the role of Industry 4.0 in achieving both customer-focused and environmental friendly application in the manufacturing context. We are especially interested in innovative papers adopting empirical methodologies such as surveys or case studies.

References:

• Ardolino, Marco, Mario Rapaccini, Nicola Saccani, Paolo Gaiardelli, Giovanni Crespi, and Carlo Ruggeri. 2018a. “The Role of Digital Technologies for the Service Transformation of Industrial Companies.” International Journal of Production Research 56 (6): 2116–2132. doi:10.1080/00207543.2017.1324224.
• Bressanelli, Gianmarco, Federico Adrodegari, Marco Perona, and Nicola Saccani. 2018b. “Exploring How Usage-Focused Business Models Enable Circular Economy through Digital Technologies.” Sustainability (Switzerland) 10 (3): 639. doi:10.3390/su10030639.
• Choi, Y.-H., and S.-H. Choi. 2018. “A Study of Crossing the Chasm in Applying Smart Factory System for SMEs.” International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics.
• Dalenogare, Lucas Santos, Guilherme Brittes Benitez, Néstor Fabián Ayala, and Alejandro Germán Frank. 2018. “The Expected Contribution of Industry 4.0 Technologies for Industrial Performance.” International Journal of Production Economics 204 (July). Elsevier B.V.: 383–394. doi:10.1016/j.ijpe.2018.08.019.
• Facchini, F., Oleśków-Szłapka, J., Ranieri, L. and Urbinati, A. (2019), “A Maturity Model for Logistics 4.0: An Empirical Analysis and a Roadmap for Future Research”, Sustainability, Vol. 12 No. 1, p. 86.
• Frank, Alejandro G., Glauco H.S. Mendes, Néstor F. Ayala, and Antonio Ghezzi. 2019. “Servitization and Industry 4.0 Convergence in the Digital Transformation of Product Firms: A Business Model Innovation Perspective.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 141 (July 2018). Elsevier: 341–351. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2019.01.014.
• Frederico, Guilherme F., Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes, Anthony Anosike, and Vikas Kumar. 2019. “Supply Chain 4.0: Concepts, Maturity and Research Agenda.” Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 25 (2): 262–282. doi:10.1108/SCM-09-2018-0339.
• Kamble, Sachin S., Angappa Gunasekaran, and Shradha A. Gawankar. 2018. “Sustainable Industry 4.0 Framework: A Systematic Literature Review Identifying the Current Trends and Future Perspectives.” Process Safety and Environmental Protection 117 (July). Institution of Chemical Engineers: 408–425. doi:10.1016/j.psep.2018.05.009.
• Lopes de Sousa Jabbour, Ana Beatriz, Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour, Moacir Godinho Filho, and David Roubaud. 2018. “Industry 4.0 and the Circular Economy: A Proposed Research Agenda and Original Roadmap for Sustainable Operations.” Annals of Operations Research 270 (1–2). Springer US: 273–286. doi:10.1007/s10479-018-2772-8.
• Mourtzis, D., Fotia, S., Boli, N. and Vlachou, E. (2019), “Modelling and quantification of industry 4.0 manufacturing complexity based on information theory: a robotics case study”, International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis, Vol. 57 No. 22, pp. 6908–6921.
• Nascimento, Daniel Luiz Mattos, Viviam Alencastro, Osvaldo Luiz Gonçalves Quelhas, Rodrigo Goyannes Gusmão Caiado, Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes, Luis Rocha-Lona, and Guilherme Tortorella. 2019. “Exploring Industry 4.0 Technologies to Enable Circular Economy Practices in a Manufacturing Context.” Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management 30 (3): 607–627. doi:10.1108/JMTM-03-2018-0071.
• Saucedo-Martínez, J.A., Pérez-Lara, M., Marmolejo-Saucedo, J.A., Salais-Fierro, T.E. and Vasant, P. (2018), “Industry 4.0 framework for management and operations: a review”, Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, Vol. 9 No. 3, pp. 789–801.
• Simmert, Benedikt, Philipp Alexander Ebel, Christoph Peters, Eva Alice Christiane Bittner, and Jan Marco Leimeister. 2019. “Conquering the Challenge of Continuous Business Model Improvement.” Business & Information Systems Engineering 61 (4): 451–468. doi:10.1007/s12599-018-0556-y.
• Sklyar, Alexey, Christian Kowalkowski, Bård Tronvoll, and David Sörhammar. 2019. “Organizing for Digital Servitization: A Service Ecosystem Perspective.” Journal of Business Research 104. Elsevier: 450–460.
• Strandhagen, Jan Ola, Logan Reed Vallandingham, Giuseppe Fragapane, Jo Wessel Strandhagen, Aili Biriita Hætta Stangeland, and Nakul Sharma. 2017. “Logistics 4.0 and Emerging Sustainable Business Models.” Advances in Manufacturing 5 (4). Shanghai University: 359–369. doi:10.1007/s40436-017-0198-1.
• Weber, Marc-André, Tim Jeske, Frank Lennings, and Sascha Stowasser. 2017. “Productivity Strategies Using Digital Information Systems in Production Environments.” In IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 338–345. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-66923-6_40.
• Zheng, Ting, Marco Ardolino, Andrea Bacchetti, Marco Perona, and Massimo Zanardini. 2019. “The Impacts of Industry 4.0: A Descriptive Survey in the Italian Manufacturing Sector.” Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management. Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. doi:10.1108/JMTM-08-2018-0269.
• Zheng, Ting, Marco Ardolino, Andrea Bacchetti, Marco Perona. 2020. “The applications of Industry 4.0 technologies in Manufacturing context: a systematic literature review.” International Journal of Production Research. doi:10.1080/00207543.2020.1824085.

Dr. Andrea Bacchetti
Dr. Marco Ardolino
Prof. Dr. Jan Ola Strandhagen
Prof. Dr. Marco Perona
Guest Editors

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• industry 4.0
• digital transformation
• smart supply chain
• servitization
• product-service system
• circular economy
• sustainability