Time to Change: Considering the 4th Industrial Revolution from
Three Sustainability Perspectives
André Ullrich and Norbert Gronau
Department of Business Informatics, University of Potsdam, August Bebel Str. 89, 14489 Potsdam, Germany
Keywords: Industry 4.0, Sustainability, Triple Bottom Line.
Abstract: Industry 4.0 leads to a radical change that is progressing incrementally. The new information and
communication technologies provide many conceivable opportunities for their application in the context of
sustainable corporate management. The combination of new digital technologies with the ecological and
social goals of companies offers a multitude of unimagined potentials and challenges. Although companies
already see the need for action, there was in the past and currently still is a lack of concrete measures that
lever the potential of Industry 4.0 for sustainability management. During the course of this position paper we
develop six theses (two from each sustainability perspective) against the background of the current situation
in research and practice, and policy.
1 INTRODUCTION
Increasing consumption of resources, climate change,
inequality of opportunity and income, or precarious
working conditions are just a few examples of the
many challenges society and companies are facing
today. At the same time, however, short term agility
and economic sustainability needs always to be
ensured. Companies must constantly take into
account a multitude of demands, both from internal
and external stakeholders, such as customer
orientation, decent working conditions, or
technological advancements. A supposedly salvific
solution for these requirements is applying
Industry 4.0 mechanisms and principles.
The 4
th
industrial revolution (4IR) suggests to
apply principles and technologies from the Internet of
Things (IoT) on the manufacturing industry. The
concept Industry 4.0 was widely disseminated and
has received great international attention. However,
the hype as a savior for industrial development
towards digitalized factories, in which efficient
processes and handling of resources or ergonomic
working conditions lead to better framework
conditions for all affected parties is disillusioning.
The 4IR-reality – apart from its promising progress –
remains below expectations. One primary point,
which is giving rise to concern is that enterprises have
no dedicated strategies for developing themselves
towards a 4IR capable enterprise. Although it is
becoming apparent that companies with an effective
4IR strategy are economically more successful, only
10% posses and follow an 4IR strategy according to
a study of 2000 global CXOs (Deloitte, 2020). These
respondents furthermore consider climate change and
environmental sustainability as the most urgent
societal challenge these days.
The concept of sustainability gained worldwide
recognition in 1987 with the report "Our Common
Future" of the World Commission on Environment
and Development also known as the Brundtland
Commission. For the first time, compliance with the
three pillars of sustainability (economic,
environmental, social) was formulated by
governments as national goals (Linnenluecke et al.,
2010).
The United Nations Environment Programme
regards the transformation of industrial production as
a ”new economic paradigm – one in which material
wealth is not delivered perforce at the expense of
growing environmental risks, ecological scarcities
and social disparities” (United Nations Environment
Programme, 2011). 4IR may offer a huge opportunity
to align the goals of a sustainable development with
the ongoing digital transformation in industry, which
in turn also carries the potential to turn into a threat
for society if sustainability targets are not taken into
account while implementing Industry 4.0. At the
moment, the concept is referring to sustainability
Ullrich, A. and Gronau, N.
Time to Change: Considering the 4th Industrial Revolution from Three Sustainability Perspectives.
DOI: 10.5220/0010148601090116
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics (IN4PL 2020), pages 109-116
ISBN: 978-989-758-476-3
Copyright
c
2020 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All r ights reserved
109
aspects only in a very limited way (Beier et al., 2020).
We argue that research as well as practice and politics
need to focus more on how sustainability aspects can
gain more influence in 4IR.
From a sustainability perspective, Industry 4.0
lags behind what is possible and societally desirable.
Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, cloud, or
big data analytics are in focus, disproportinately
neglected thus far is, however, a holistic – not
technology-centred - sustainable consideration of
human, technological, and organizational processes
and structures. This would according to our
understandig present the best lever to future-oriented
work and societal cohabitation. Thus, there is a
change in focus of action necessary, if the promising
potentials of 4IR shall be leveraged. During the
course of this position paper we develop six theses
(two in each sustainability sphere) against the
background of the current situation in research and
practice, and policy.
2 ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE
Following a market-based view of production and
consumption, profit, cost savings, economic growth
and development are crucial aspects of economic
sustainability. In this vein, the economic sphere of
sustainability refers to the capacity of fostering
resource efficiency, thereby enabling an entity to
endure on the market over time. A more specific view
of economic sustainability claims that “economic
sustainability focuses on that portion of the natural
resource base that provides physical inputs, both
renewable (e.g. forests) and exhaustible (e.g.
minerals)” (Goodland, 1995) into the production and
application processes. Economic and social
sustainability converge when it comes to considering
business ethics, workers’ rights or fair-trade, whereby
all of these aspects can be encountered from research,
practice, and policy.
2.1 4IR Is an Imbalanced
Number-driven and KPI-based
Transformation Process in Which
Social and Environmental Goals
Are of Secondary Nature
When considering 4IR real world implementation
projects it unveils that there is a broad variety of
different goals at the beginning of such projects. To
name a few target areas we refer to increasing
usability and workplace performance, horizontal and
vertical integration by connecting entities as well as
resource-saving circular economy. In entrepreneurial
context, they all have to proof against the priority of
economic efficiency. Therefore, 4IR was supposed to
result in decrease of production costs by 10-30%, of
logistic costs by 10-30%, of quality management
costs by 10-20% (cf. Bauernhansl et al., 2017; Table
1). Thus, a general pro of 4IR is that it enables lower
manufacturing and service cost by better resource
allocation and usage. Profit orientation and
entrepreneurial responsibility are not mutually
exclusive. Responsible business practices need to be
part of a companies’ strategy, since companies rely
on a well-functioning environment and vice versa.
Table 1: Economic potentials of Industry 4.0 (Bauernhansl
et al., 2017).
Costs Effects Potentials
Inventory
costs
Reduction of safety
stocks
Avoidance of Bullwhip
and Burbidge effect
-30 – 40%
production
costs
Improving of OEE
Process control loops
Improvement of
personnel flexibility
Use of Smart
Wearables
-10 – 30%
Logistics
costs
Increasing the degree of
automation
Smart Wearables
-10 – 30%
Complexity
costs
Line spans extension
Trouble shooting
reduction
-60 – 70%
Quality costs
Everything as a Service
(XaaS)
Real-time quality
control loops
-10 – 20 %
Maintenance
costs
optimization of spare
parts inventories
Condition-oriented
maintenance
Dynamic prioritizations
- 20 – 30 %
Although digital process control allows to expect a
more efficient use of raw materials, energy and water,
the corresponding potential for saving resources is not
fully exhausted, since cost savings would change
motivational structures and affect the production as
well as the consumption behavior (Foit, 2018):
Decreasing unit costs imply that recycling is less
profitable, that is the positive effects of transparency
are not realized. Furthermore, they provide a strong
incentive for increasing the production output. The
resulting additional resource consumption is usually
higher than the initial savings. On the consumer side
IN4PL 2020 - International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics
110
influences a potentially lower price – if passed
through by the producing company – usage behavior
such as fostering a disposable culture. From an
economic point of view, this disposable culture is a
prerequisite of contemporary market economy and
would enable an increase in sales volumes. Even if
contemporary economic and financial systems and,
thus, companies, politics as well as society rely on
growth, resources are limited and therefore precious.
This growth is based to a great extent on resource
exploitation. Besides the above discussed efficiency
gains the focus needs to be broadened on
effectiveness of transformation process and measures
too.
Within such top-down-driven transformation
processes, usually changes are made that address
positively the KPIs of a company. Of course, figures
are in primary focus of management since they allow
for a holistic diagnosis and steering of the company.
These figures usually inform about production,
purchase, sales states, that is they are of economic
nature. Environmental figures and reports gaining
more importance since millennium. Eco Management
and Audit Scheme (EMAS) as new environmental
policy instrument assesses the environmental impact
of a company to improve its sustainable development.
Its application is rather self-motivated and
participation of companies is still expandable. The
international environmental management norm ISO
14001 emphasizes a continuous improvement process
regarding environmental performance of a company
and addresses rather external demands. Thus we see
that there is a tendency towards entrepreneurial
responsibility regarding environment and employees.
However, 4IR initiatives and transformation projects
need to incorporate environmental effects and
employees need to be more integrated into their
projects. Focusing the employees, this might
ultimately lead to declining personnel absence costs
and less health-care costs, when they, e.g., can
actively participate in transformation processes by
co-design work processes and tasks. Additionally, the
consideration of environmental goals, e.g., by
incorporating and compensating negative external
costs would allow for intergenerational justice.
2.2 IT Artifacts Are Not Sufficiently
Sustainable Themselves and, Thus,
Itself Rather a Cost Driver than a
Sustainability Realizer
In the literature on sustainability, technologies and IT
artefacts are characterized as instruments for
achieving sustainable development (cf. Orr et al.,
2014; Stuermer et al., 2017). Stuermer et al. (2017)
argue that digital artifacts should be regarded as
corporate resources that shall be designed according
to sustainability characteristics. However, short-term
cost-efficiency was often the primary overarching
paradigm when designing new technologies. Instead
characteristics like longevity, reusability, or up- or
recyclability, and sustainable design principles like
scalability, modularity, reconfigurability, or
redundancy should be orientation-points when
designing and creating sustainable information
technologies.
The life-cycle of a technology as a whole needs to
be considered when designing as well as when
purchasing a technology. Nowadays, besides
interoperability and connectivity aspects, far too often
the initial acquisition and maintenance costs are
focally considered when companies acquire new
technologies. Furthermore, the cost and insecurities
regarding longevity and long-term applicability are
especially for SMEs a barrier. Over the last years it
could be observed that they either delay purchasing
new technologies or acquire new technologies such as
sensors, actors, or assistant devices that still have to
proof their additional value for the manifold specific
use cases yet, in order to realize potentials of
digitization and not simply do digitization. The
environment is unnecessarily burdened by
technological and electronical waste that is frequently
hardly further processable and, thus, requires
monetary expenses for special waste disposal.
Additionally, effectiveness gains are not used, since
new technologies have to be acquired when replacing
a prevalent technology due to lacking interoperability
with other technologies or systems.
Accepting such kind of shortcomings is a
relatively high price for gaining short-term
efficiency, which, of course, is necessary to secure
survivability of a company. In the long run, however,
IT artifacts are rather a cost driver, as they have been
designed and realized thus far. IT artifacts are means
to achieve sustainability (which besides energy
efficiency gains they do not) but are itself not
sustainable, that is, they do not sufficiently lever
economic potentials that lie in their longevity,
adaptability, and reusability yet.
3 ENVIRONMENTAL
PERSPECTIVE
The environmental sphere of sustainability primarily
affects the usage of natural resources, whereby not
only the consumption is considered but also the
Time to Change: Considering the 4th Industrial Revolution from Three Sustainability Perspectives
111
residuals and waste that possibly result from using
technologies. In this light, pollution prevention
includes natural resources such as air, water, land and
waste. Therefore, environmental sustainability
addresses both production and consumption (Lozano
and Huizingh, 2011).
3.1 4IR Makes No Significant
Contributions to Environmental
Sustainability besides Energy
Efficiency Gains Thus Far
Probably inter alia because energy efficiency gains
have been one of the initial goals of 4IR, efficiency
seems to be the most important topic with regard to
environmental sustainability. Colloquial
argumentation is that 4IR allows to avoid the
unnecessary usage of resources the customer does not
need or want. This is achieved by realizing mass
production advantages when producing in batch size
one numbers. It is widely advertised as innovative
revolution, that will radically change the way of
production by having a holistic perspective on
resource usage and value creation. However, the
goals of Industry 4.0 still follow very traditional
pathways. Modern digital technologies are
incorporated into traditional production
environments. Cyber-physical-system-enhanced
machines are getting interconnected and reach a
certain level of autonomy.
The often mentioned term resource efficiency
presumably points towards environmental effects and
implications of Industry 4.0. Xu et al. (2018)
supported the efficiency claims with empirical
evidence, where a company achieved a reduction in
energy consumption by 10% through the application
of IoT technology and, thus, realized the prophesied
cost reductions. Economic and social aspects are the
dominating dimensions within the Industry 4.0
literature (Beier et al., 2020): The majority of the
prevalent literature on Industry 4.0 refers to economic
issues (Table 2) promising either generally more
efficiency or only concretizing the statement to more
efficiency in production (cf. Xu, 2018; Zhong, 2017).
Many articles claim improved resource efficiency as
a consequence of Industry 4.0. It is not made clear
though under which circumstances those efficiency
gains are to be expected. A detailed contribution of
Industry 4.0 to a green growth of society is also
missing.
According to green growth theory, economic
expansion is compatible with the earth’s ecology by
using natural resources in a sustainable manner.
Technological change and substitution shall enable
decoupling of GDP growth from resource usage and
carbon emissions. Empirical evidence does not
support green growth theory (Hickel and Kallis,
2020). Material productivity, however, positively
influences the decoupling of GDP and resource
usage, which is not surprising since resource
efficiency is a usual target characteristic of modern
manufacturing processes. The overall resource
consumption though is increasing much more than
efficient 4IR production processes can compensate
yet.
Table 2: Number of sustainability related text fragments per
category and dimension in most cited Industry 4.0 literature
(cf. Beier et al., 2020).
Economic Environmental Social
Human 35 15 88
Technolo
gy
99 44 64
Or
g
anization 111 52 68
Overall 140 63 93
The vision of Industry 4.0 as it is contemporarily
perceived stands rather for a digital update of the
established patterns of industrial production than a
disruptive concept with transformative potential. This
is especially harmful when it comes to integrating
sustainability aspects in industrial processes. Industry
4.0 seems to sustain the path dependencies of a
traditional instead of initiating a sustainable
industrialization. The contribution to environmental
sustainability is quite limited to energy efficiency
gains thus far.
3.2 The Amount of Technological
Waste Will Increase Massively in
the Midterm Range and This Will
Lead to a Very Negative Ecological
Balance
The number of internet capable devices as well as the
amount of generated data already exceeds by far the
number of humans living on planet earth. The
phenomenon of mobile phones that are replaced by
new models - even when they are fully functional -
due to a few new features is a considerable indicator
for development in industrial environments, when
politics or industry associations do not intervene.
4IR applications have in sum a much higher
energy consumption and demand for miniaturized
computers. This demand cannot always be covered by
sustainable sources and thus consumes resources and
produces thereby waste materials with which society
has to deal with in the long run.
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Due to lacking interoperability between systems
and yet not institutionalized standards some extend of
technologies, be it sensors or other kind of technology
enabling Industry 4.0 principles, are replaced even
before their life-cycle is over. Furthermore, the
additionally needed minicomputers are hard to
recycle, e.g., the dismantling process in which acids
are necessary to detach the gold from circuit boards.
Hence, it can be assumed that the negative ecological
effects of this industrial technologization overweigh
by far the above mentioned energy efficiency gains.
Therefore, the reintegration of waste products
(resources, partial and end products) into the value-
added cycle is elementary in order to operate
profitably against the background of rising resource
prices, conflict raw materials and increasing use of
rare materials (e.g. in chip production).
On the contrary, These minicomputers are more
and more adaptable to the current requirements
through their software. The hardware could remain
the same, since they are now sufficiently powerful
and flexible enough for most application scenarios.
Accordingly, it may also be conceivable that waste
production due to increasing replacement is not a
primary issue, if the hardware is sufficient. Much
more problematic is the extreme increase in IoT
devices mentioned at the beginning of this article,
which may lead to a shortage of raw materials.
Improvements with regard to decomposing and
recycling are thus far not neither sufficiently
considered nor investigated by research. The few that
take up this issue follow the colloquial assumption
that 4IR allows higher revenues and contribution
margins. These statements are justified due to the fact
that products and services can be better adjusted to
individual customer needs and apart from mass
production higher prices can be called for them. The
future external costs of technologies are yet not fully
incorporated into prices and technological
advancements are from this perspective made at the
expense of an ecological balance.
4 SOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
The social sphere of sustainability deals with crucial
aspects such as the standard of living and work,
education and community supporting opportunities,
including in terms of equity and equality. Aspects
addressing human and work are in particular focus in
this sustainability perspective. Environmental justice
as well as stewardship of natural resources both
locally and globally link social sustainability to the
environment. However, as Goodland (1995)
highlights, social and environmental sustainability
are connected in a quite more fundamental way, since
“environmental sustainability or maintenance of life-
support systems is a prerequisite for social
sustainability”.
4.1 4IR Requires a Much Higher Level
of Qualification from Workers -
Further Qualification Still Is a
Neglected Area in Enterprises,
Especially SMEs
On the one hand, the digital transformation opens up
new perspectives for employees. New occupational
fields, reorientation or even the elimination of
monotonous activities can be mentioned as examples.
On the other hand, the resulting automation of work
tasks and processes means above all a reduction in
labor costs through rationalization. However, this
does not necessarily and universally has to be
accompanied by losses on the employee side. So far,
automation has replaced a few activities, but at the
same time it has also increased the demand for new
activities and thus labor in general (cf. Arntz et al.,
2020). The ability to carry out physical tasks in an
unstructured work environment is solely one
capability amongst others that is yet and will in near
future not (be) automated. However, current studies
(cf. Bakhshi et al., 2017; Tabares, 2019) draw a more
differentiated picture. While the newly emerging
needs are primarily in the areas of mechanical
engineering and IT services, job losses are mainly
concentrated in production and administration. Thus,
there is an imbalance expected.
Process automation and robots are an important
factor in meeting the predicted future shortage on the
labor market (Jacobs et al., 2017). However, it is to
be expected that the requirements on the demand side
of the labor market will change more quickly than the
supply side will be able to answer with skills
development. Technology skills or competences in
the facets of, e.g., process, organization, interaction
are gaining more importance in manufacturing
(Gronau et al., 2017). Vocational training measures
need to follow suit by adapting the focus of training
measures towards the new requirements as well as
experimenting with learning approaches such as life-
long-learning, learning on or near the job.
Furthermore, vocational training is still mostly done
through frontal teaching, which is based on the
behavioristic stimulus-response model or related
concepts that assume a causality between teaching
and learning. This understanding is proven to be
outdated (cf. Teichmann et al., 2019) due to
Time to Change: Considering the 4th Industrial Revolution from Three Sustainability Perspectives
113
understanding of internal cognitive human processes
as well as the advantages of haptic experimenting
with new technologies, especially when they are the
object in question as it is in this industrial
technologization.
This, by technology induced transformation, leads
to new roles or even activity types such as, inter alia,
the system regulator or the IT specialist for digital
networking. Requirements they are facing are,
amongst others, due to a high level of
interdisciplinarity, the sharing of experiences about
products, materials, and work across processes,
divisions, and hierarchies or context transferability.
They have to organize themselves and other process
participants in this new environment. Therefore, an
understanding of the process structures is required.
Furthermore, employees have to be capable of
problem solving, supervision, judgement, holistic
thinking, and need to possess an ability of
communication and adaptability (Prinz et al., 2016;
Bakhshi et al., 2017).
At the moment, the requirements towards the
employees are increasing radically. Not just regarding
their professional qualification but also due to
changes of work in general. Especially SME cannot
provide sufficient capacity for further qualification
for which employees need to conduct qualification
seminars, away from their work processes. Therefore,
a long and near the job qualification measures seem
promising to enable employees that are faced with
new forms of work and company organisation, new
work content and new forms of employment. In
addition, work design will be more strongly
influenced by entrepreneurial forms of labour supply.
In particular, however, workers will have to cope with
the fact that the processes will be much more diverse
and flexible than they were in the past. In addition,
required basic skills referred to as digital literacy are
still not a common capability of the employees,
especially in the manufacturing halls. Against this
background, further qualification is an
underrepresented area in companies, especially in
SMEs.
4.2 Individual Needs of the Employees
within 4IR Transformation
Projects Are Not Sufficiently
Considered
Besides the required qualification, the employees
need also to be open for the upcoming transformation.
This can be achieved by raising awareness and
influencing their attitude positively. Acceptance is a
positive attitude towards technologies and the
intention to use the technology for the intended
purpose. This is achieved by eliminating barriers and
applying participation measures (Figure 1). The
transformation usually is an iterative development
process that is characterized by insecurities or
uncertainties regarding development paths and the
envisaged target state on side of the employees.
Figure 1: Levels of employee participation.
Within these development processes new
technologies, processes, and work tasks for the
employees require an accompanying change
management that focusses on the employee needs. In
e.g. individual interviews or workshops the general
sentiment can be gathered and afterwards measures
for sensitization be developed. Especially isolated
pilot test cases are widely used in manufacturing for
demonstrating the benefits of new technologies such
as AR glasses. Often, however, these technologies
require usability optimization, since ergonomic
handling was not necessarily in focus when
designing. Additionally, technologically induced
limits due to, e.g., battery volume and weight can be
stressful over time for the employees.
Learning human-machine interfaces and
augmented reality systems turn employees into
augmented operators. This closes competence gaps,
accelerates processes and reduces errors. At the same
time, requirement, communication and instruction
structures are changing and, in the long term, the
entire corporate culture is changing: there is a shift
from physical to predominantly psychological
demands and thus stress at work. Although time and
location flexibility can promote work-life balance, it
is also associated with a mixture of work and private
life, which leads to stress.
Furthermore, changes are exhausting for most
people. Repeated familiarization with different
technologies is cognitively effortful, especially when
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114
there are unused potentials regarding their usability.
Therefore, the transformation accompanying change
management measures are necessary in order to
sensitize the employees and to minimize cognitive
barriers are a still underemphasized aspect of
transformation projects.
In Industry 4.0 literature the employees are
addressed quite often. However, concrete
implications for future work and job profiles are still
mainly imprecise and vague (Beier et al., 2020).
Therefore, framework conditions need to be set by
policy and companies for context sensitive adequate
qualification measures. This is inter alia done by
developing of a comprehensive road map for this
digital corporate transformation, comprising
development path and transition states under
consideration of socio-technical change approaches.
Furthermore, strategies are required in the mid-term
range to protect the individual needs, that is e.g.
acceptance, satisfaction, and health of employees.
5 CONCLUSION
Industry 4.0 leads to a radical change that is
progressing incrementally. The new information and
communication technologies provide many
conceivable opportunities for their application in the
context of sustainable corporate management. The
combination of new digital technologies with the
ecological and social goals of companies offers a
multitude of unimagined potentials and challenges.
Although companies already see the need for action,
there was in the past and currently still is a lack of
concrete measures that lever the potential of Industry
4.0 for sustainability management.
Economic potentials provided by Industry 4.0 are
not sufficiently made use of thus far. Technologies for
realizing these potential seem to have also a negative
economic effect at the moment. They are mostly cost
intensive when purchasing and - since they are
conceived as means for realizing sustainability rather
than they are sustainably designed themselves – they
promise to be a cost driver in the long run.
The environmental sphere is often limited to
residual energy efficiency with supposed rebound
effects. Here it is important to adopt a holistic,
systemic perspective of resource conservation.
Furthermore, the target criteria of a sustainable
society are often only considered in isolation when
examining Industry 4.0 in general or individual
technologies, so-called IT artefacts in specific. Long
term effects of technological waste of products that
are produced and used at the moment for realizing
Industry 4.0 are still under-researched. Here we need
concepts and regulations for re or upcycling of
technologies realizing Industry 4.0 at the moment but
also for products and goods in general. Following the
route of a circular economy and approaches of bio-
economy seems to be a promising first step for
practice.
As stated earlier, new technologies lead to new
processes and this, in turn, leads to new tasks for the
employees. Ultimately, humans are in the center of
Industry 4.0 transformation processes. Success and
failure strongly depend on how usability, ergonomics,
and, of course, acceptance of changing technologies,
processes, roles and new tasks can be secured.
Furthermore, systematic qualification and
sensitization measures need to be developed and
applied from the companies but also supported by
political initiatives, e.g., by setting funding schemes
and subventions especially for small and medium
sized companies.
Industry 4.0 has a high sustainability potential due
to intelligent digital technologies, through
regionalization or decentralization processes and the
optimization of product and resource flows. At the
same time, possible rebound effects as well as risks
with regard to competition or labor market need to be
taken into account. Therefore, incentives from
politics should to be set.
Future focus should lie on the questions of how
the concept of Industry 4.0 and its concrete
implementation can contribute (1) to the realization
of the United Nations sustainability development
goals or (2) to sustainability aspects beyond energy
efficiency and working conditions. In summary,
research in the context of Industry 4.0 has, thus far,
failed to prove its benefits for a more sustainable
production and, therefore, societal development.
Practice projects, on the other side, rely to a great
extent on the preliminary work of research and are
thus increasing efficiency but are mostly not
characterized by a sufficient effectiveness for
realizing green and sustainable manufacturing. It,
however, is not to late and a way need and will be
figured, which changes the course of research and
practice. Therefore, it is promising that sovereignty,
interoperability and sustainability are the future
strategic fields of action for Industry 4.0, created by
policy makers, with the goal of shaping digital
ecosystems globally. Therefore, it is time to
responsibility and proactively contribute to a more
sustainable development of Industry 4.0 and thus a
more sustainable society.
Time to Change: Considering the 4th Industrial Revolution from Three Sustainability Perspectives
115
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the Junior Research
Group “ProMUT” (grant number: 01UU1705B)
which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research as part of its funding
initiative “Social-Ecological Research”.
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