Improving sustainable production in the context of Industry 4.0 technologies adoption - Evidence from metalworking Industry

Abstract

Nowadays the industry places a greater focus on the integration of production and sustainable development and on improving the sustainability efficiency. It is still the research niche to understand the specific factors regarding the progress of activities towards sustainable production. This study has used literature analysis to describe sustainable production (SP), in terms of implication of the Industry 4.0 technologies and a questionnaire survey, which was conducted within 84 small and medium sized enterprises metalworking Industry in Europe, Poland. The questionnaire in this article considers the factors describing the level of SP in the enterprises of metalworking industry and also the level of the implementation of selected Industry 4.0 technologies, namely: cyber-physical systems (CPSs) and robots. Next, a statistical analysis was conducted using correlation coefficients. The highest correlation was observed in the case of applying CPS systems into SMEs company metalworking industry and improving the level of SP, respectively in the area: (1) environmental: considering implementation of climate governance/action strategies, (2) economic: in the aspect of increasing after-sales service, (3) social: in view of improving the customer satisfaction and implementation the continuous improvement process within a company. Also, a relatively good correlation was observed in the case of the analysis of the relationship between usage of robots in the company and factors describing SP level in the same areas as was discovered for the correlation between applying CPSs. The results indicated also that implementation of robots has a strong relationship with the SP factor in the social area, namely: accidents at work recorded. So, the research results show that for the SMEs metalworking Industry surveyed, the implementation of Industry 4.0 technology, namely robots and CPSs, increases the level of SP.

Keywords: the Industry 4.0 technologies, sustainable development

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004327