Sustainable Enterprise Design 4.0: Addressing Industry 4.0 Technologies from the Perspective of Sustainability

Abstract

The introduction of Industry 4.0 and sustainability in production is currently on everyone’s mind. However, companies face difficulties to address these trends in their long-term enterprise strategy and design. Industry 4.0 promises strategic advantages for companies in many respects, but there is a lack of instruments and concepts for integrating emerging technologies in an overall enterprise system design. Similarly, the multiple perspectives regarding economic, environmental and social sustainability provide a framework for thinking about a strategy for sustainable enterprise design. Based on the three principles presented in this paper for Sustainable Enterprise Design, this article aims to present an approach to better address sustainability as well as Industry 4.0 in terms of a long-term strategic, enterprise design that is sustainable. As a result, a list of needs, functional requirements as well as possible Industry 4.0 physical solutions is proposed to achieve a long-term sustainable enterprise design. The consequence of the perspective of an enterprise as a system that can be designed provides a rigorous approach that takes advantage of Industry 4.0 technologies and the multiple perspectives and candidate physical solutions that the research community offers.