Search Results (9)

With the deep integration and development of both the digital economy and the ecological economy, governments, media, researchers and others have begun paying great attention to green digital issues. Yet whether and how digital resources shape corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains unclear. This paper examines the relationship between digital resources, CSR, and environmental performance during a period of rapid technological development, with a focus on Chinese manufacturing enterprises. We draw on structural equation modeling (SEM) to verify how digitalization contributes to more environmentally friendly and sustainable economic development. Our dataset comprises survey data from 174 Chinese manufacturing companies, providing a theoretical basis and empirical support for the deep integration of digitalization with green and low-carbon transformation. The results demonstrate that digital resources significantly promote CSR, which in turn facilitates the improvement of environmental performance. We thus find that CSR plays a mediating role in the digital resources–environmental performance relationship. Consequently, companies can consider greening their innovations through CSR practices as part of the digital transformation environment. Finally, digital resources and CSR contribute to greening innovation in different ways. This study highlights the critical role of robust CSR in driving green performance during digital transformation. It addresses a significant research gap by exploring the synergistic relationship between digitalization and green innovation, emphasizing the strategic importance of integrating CSR to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for both society and businesses. Additionally, the study identifies deficiencies in existing research regarding the interplay between digital transformation and CSR and investigates how enterprises can directly enhance environmental performance by leveraging digital resources within the context of the digital economy. Full article

This study analyzed the operational environment of supply chains involved in the production of eco-friendly plastics, with a particular emphasis on small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Qualitative research methods were used to highlight the significance of extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations and strong recycling programs for the sustainability of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Also, this study looked at international regulations affecting the implementation of circular economy strategies and the difficulties in creating sustainable supply chains. It concluded that waste reduction, effective supply chain management, and sustainable practices are crucial aspects of a more effective and sustainable global plastic-manufacturing sector. This research highlighted the significance of government policies in SME revival and used Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to help SMEs adopt sustainable supply chain practices that act as a catalyst for industry reform. Full article

This paper designs and implements an energy management system based on the Spring Boot framework. The system mainly includes three layers, which are the data collection layer, the business logic layer, and the display interface layer from bottom to top. The data collection layer is based on the RS-485 electrical standard and the MODBUS communication protocol. The two protocols connect all energy consumption monitoring points into a mixed topology communication network in the enterprise. The programs in the data collection layer poll each energy consumption monitoring point in the network to collect the data and transmit to the business logic layer. The business logic layer is developed on the basis of the Spring Boot framework and mainly includes two parts: the MySQL database and Tomcat server. In the MySQL database, the stored data are horizontally split according to the time column and stored in different data tables. The split of data reduces the load of a single data table and improves the query performance of the database. The Tomcat server is built into the Spring Boot framework to provide a basic environment for system operation. The Spring Boot framework is the core component of the system. It is responsible for collecting, storing, and analyzing data from energy consumption monitoring points, receiving and processing data requests from the display interface layer. It also provides standard data interfaces to the external programs. The display interface layer is developed on the basis of the Vue framework and integrated into the Spring Boot framework. The display layer combines an open-source visualization chart library called ECharts to provide users with a fully functional and friendly human–computer interaction interface. Through the calculation of hardware and software costs, considering the personnel cost in different regions, the total cost of the energy management system can be estimated. The cost of construction was approximately 210,000 USD in this paper. Since the system was actually deployed in a manufacturing company in December 2019, it has been operating stably for more than 600 days. Full article

According to previous studies, China’s green credit policy, which was launched in 2012, increases environment-friendly manufacturing enterprises’ loan amounts. In this paper, we focus on a redistribution mechanism among environment-friendly manufacturing firms, namely, we determine whether the effects of the green credit policy differ between small and medium-sized environment-friendly manufacturing enterprises (SMEMEs) and large environment-friendly manufacturing enterprises (LEMEs). Using a difference in difference model (DID) and a difference in difference in difference model (DDD), we find that SMEMEs obtain more loans than LEMEs due to the green credit policy. We further analyze three potential foundations of this redistribution mechanism: information asymmetry, financial development, and government environmental investment. The results demonstrate that the redistribution effect occurs in both low and high information asymmetry conditions but only in regions with satisfactory financial development and with lower government environmental investment. Our findings enrich the literature on green credit, sustainable finance, and small finance, and they provide references for enterprises, banks, and governments. Full article

This study examines the influence of eco-innovation capability on sustainability driven innovation practices in SMEs. In this study, eco-innovation capability is represented by four factors—internal setting, strategies, operations and structure—while sustainability driven innovation practices are represented by three types of practices—process, organizational and product. The direct relationship between eco-innovation capability and sustainability driven innovation practices is statistically tested by using a sample of 397 Romanian manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises using PLS–SEM and SmartPLS software. The results show that the development of eco-innovation capability has a direct and positive effect on sustainability driven innovation practices employed in manufacturing SMEs by encouraging them to get involved in cleaner production practices, waste handling and recycling on a regular basis or integrate eco-efficiency into their operations, develop new channels for sustainable products or integrate customers’ suggestions or complaints, implement environment management systems, use eco-friendly raw materials or focus on new product development, for instance. Therefore, the paper extends the literature dedicated to eco-innovation by shedding some light on what to focus on when building eco-innovation capability. Full article

Taking an environment-friendly green closed-loop supply chain as the research object, this work established a two-stage closed-loop supply chain game model. Considering the influence of the environmental protection input on the whole supply chain, there are different decisions among the participants in the supply chain, and the different choices will have impacts on the benefits of the whole supply chain when manufacturers select a closed-loop supply chain model of third-party recycling. Hence, this work compared and analyzed the impact of centralized decision-making and decentralized decision-making on the returns and pricing strategies of each participant. Finally, an optimized cooperative mechanism decision model considering a cost profit sharing contract was further designed. The model is conducive to obtaining the maximum profit value in centralized decision-making and avoids the negative impact of a “double marginal effect” on supply chain income in decentralized decision-making, and finally, improves the overall coordination and profit of a green closed-loop supply chain. The numerical examples are conducted to verify the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed models. This work provides a helpful decision support and guidance for enterprises and the government on the used products recycling decisions to better manage the green closed-loop supply chain. Full article

In the era of the sharing economy, the rise of production capacity sharing has changed traditional manufacturing modes and broken the balance of original production systems. In addition to that environmental-friendly manufacturing enterprises are of great significance with regard to production capacity sharing and sustainable development of the ecology environment. To investigate the decision-making behaviors of the participants involved in low-carbon production capacity sharing, an evolutionary game model taking into account the platforms, manufacturing enterprises with idle production capacity, and those with demanding production capacity is constructed. Then, both evolutionary game theory and Lyapunov stability theorem are used to analyze the asymptotic stability of the equilibrium and evolutionary stability strategies of the system. Besides, the economic and managerial significance of the evolutionary stability strategy is given. Finally, the influence of low-carbon production capacity of enterprises on the stability of the dynamic system is discussed, such as the cost effect of low-carbon production capacity, the effect of transaction cost, and so on. Results indicate that they can provide theoretical reference for decision-making with respect to the platforms, manufacturing enterprises, and sustainable development of the dynamic system. Full article

Nowadays, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are becoming increasingly competitive. In order to fulfill the rapidly changing market and diversified demands of customers, the SMEs need to achieve and maintain high productivity and quality, with fast response, sufficient flexibility, and short lead times. Therefore, Industry 4.0 offers various manufacturing paradigms that might be a solution in order to increase the productivity of SMEs such as intelligent and flexible manufacturing. Furthermore, in the last decade, the emphasis on adopting eco-friendly practices, implementing sustainability measures, and protecting the environment has continued to grow, to gain traction across SMEs. In fact, because of this need, many SMEs are now adopting sustainable manufacturing practices in response to this increased focus on sustainability and environmental stewardship. The main purpose of this paper is to design and study the implementation of a sustainable, intelligent material handling system for material distribution with utilizing an agent-based algorithm as control architecture. A time study-based methodology has been implemented to evaluate the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) to identify the matters that need to be resolved and optimized to increase the OEE percentage with consideration of the sustainability of the system. An exhaustive analytical trend applied to the generated time study data. Accordingly, further hardware, software, and layout design limitation and problems detected, and the proper solutions were anticipated. The observed time study results were presented, a fundamental set of analytical observation and information with associated histograms was reviewed. In addition, the study aims to recognize and analyze effective factors on the sustainability of improved processes, using a simple model. To do this, using experts’ viewpoints, affective factors on the sustainability of process improvement activities are determined. Full article

Green design is advocated and developed in response to the increasingly deteriorating global environment, but its implementation is only based on the morality of the entrepreneurs, without economic incentive and legal restraint. As a result, green design has not been widely adopted. In recent years, the European countries, the U.S., Japan, the UN and Taiwan have successively promoted environmental accounting guidelines and required enterprises to disclose environmental improvement information, so as to improve the environment through production that will unavoidably impact product manufacturing. How product design should respond to this trend is a concern of this study. This study adopted the KJ (Kawakita Jiro) method and the meta-research method to analyze the influence factors. Then, it was discussed whether green design is feasible. The results showed that the requirements of green accounting include: expanding corporate social responsibility, production cannot be exempted from environmental protection, the manufacturing of clean products can generate pollution, the external production cost should be internalized, the redesign to improve the product production process and packaging, reducing resource waste and implementing the (Reduce, Recycle, Reuse) 3R policy, lifecycle assessment for all assessments and developing environmentally-friendly products, which can be solved with green design. Full article