The Link Between Industry 4.0 and Sustainable Manufacturing: An Analysis of the Results of a Survey of Manufacturing Enterprises

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore the potential link between the adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies in the manufacturing industry and the development of sustainable manufacturing, understood as the production of goods with the minimum use of energy and natural resources, while maintaining maximum profit and ensuring the health and safety of society throughout the product life cycle. The article first addresses 4 research questions, the first of which concerns a possible connection between the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies and the presence of an ISO 14001 certificate in an industrial enterprise, considered as an indirect indicator of compliance with the principles of sustainable manufacturing, the second – the connection between the implementation of Industry 4.0 technologies and «green» industrial technologies, the third – the links between the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies and the promotion of various specific areas of greening, and the fourth – the links between the introduction of digital technologies and the recognition of significant environmental benefits from the use of digital technologies in the enterprise. The analysis was based on quantified data from the annual market survey of the digital activity of Russian manufacturing enterprises for 2021, which includes a set of indicators characterizing technological and digital activity in the field of greening and increasing resource efficiency.The obtained results indicate that, although at the technological level, the relationship between the development in the field of Industry 4.0 and the field of «green» industrial technologies is quite unambiguous, from the viewpoint of the enterprise's compliance with the criteria for sustainable production, to a lesser extent, one can speak of the important role of Industry 4.0 technologies. The presence of environmental benefits from the introduction of digital technologies was more often noted by those respondents in whose enterprises artificial intelligence and big data technologies were introduced. The same technologies were recognized as the key technologies of Industry 4.0 for sustainable development, associated with the largest number of individual areas of greening production, according to the results of the study.