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

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

 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

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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

99 44 64

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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