Sustainable manufacturing through empowering machine tools with IoT innovations: a literature review

Abstract

In the 21st century, sustainability takes the front seat as one of the main objectives while designing and developing new technologies. Machine tools have significant contributions in fuelling all four industrial revolutions. One of the major stepping stones to the fifth Industrial Revolution is making these machine tools sustainable. In this paper, we review the major developments driven by the integration of internet of things (IoT) in the field of machine tools which contribute to achieving a sustainable future. This integration of IoT in machine tools is also significant in contributing to different sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Through this work, we aim to reach a better understanding of current improvements in machine tool operations and ecosystem achieved through IoT innovations. The future research directions that are opening in this domain and their scope and limitations are also covered.