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Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2023) | Viewed by 9990

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Dr. Francisco J. G. Silva

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Guest Editor

Department of Mechanical Engineering, ISEP–School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: tribology; coatings; manufacturing processes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Raul D. S. G. Campilho

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Co-Guest Editor

Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: advanced manufacturing systems; automation and robotics; industrial design
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Dr. Carla M. A. Pinto

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Co-Guest Editor

Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto, Portugal
Interests: epidemiological and within-host models; dynamical systems; fractional order models
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the evolution of the world population and global consumption, supported by the economic growth that all economies aspire, it is necessary to produce more and more. However, the harm already caused by humanity to the environment needs to be reverted, and for this, it is necessary to use innovative production techniques which save on materials and consumables normally used, consume less energy, cause less professional illness, and are equally competitive. This mission has already been carried out by many researchers, but there is still a lot to be done. Automation, the lean philosophy, and regulations and laws for hygiene and health at work, have produced excellent results, but are still insufficient for the state of degradation of the environment and health that we have reached. From the triple bottom line, only economic sustainability deserves more attention, but this must be in perfect harmony with the other two aspects.

This Special Issue aims to bring together works of excellent quality in the development of models, frameworks, theories, perspectives, literature reviews, and case studies that indicate the gap found in the literature that gave rise to the work and describe in an exemplary way the methodologies used, as well as the results and main conclusions, constituting a reference piece for scholars and researchers in the near future. You are invited to participate in this project.

Prof. Dr. Francisco J. G. Silva
Prof. Dr. Raul D. S. G. Campilho
Dr. Carla M.A. Pinto
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 605 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Impact of Financial Development on Industrial Upgrading Based on the Analysis of Intermediation Effect and Threshold Effect

by Guihuan Yan and Yi Chen

Sustainability 2023, 15(10), 8364; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15108364 - 22 May 2023

Viewed by 2123

Abstract

Accelerating industrial upgrading is essential for sustainable development. This paper aims to study how financial development affects industrial transformation and upgrading. First, the financial development index (fin) and the industrial upgrading index (htec, indu) are built using the entropy value approach, which is based on panel data from 30 provinces and cities in China from 2010 to 2020; second, using government intervention as the threshold variable, a fixed effects model and a threshold-effects model are utilized to empirically examine the non-linear link between financial development and industrial sophistication; and finally, the mechanism of financial development on industrial upgrading is examined using the mediating effect model, with science and technology innovation serving as the mediating variable. The study found that financial development has a positive contribution to high-tech industries (htecs). There is a U-shaped non-linear relationship between financial development and industrial advancement (indu). Finance has a stronger effect on promoting industrial upgrading via the intermediary role of science and technology innovation (tec). There is a significant double threshold effect between finance and industrial upgrading. Based on this, this paper puts forward countermeasure suggestions from the perspectives of financial development and scientific and technological innovation. It provides a basis for decision making to realize China’s industrial upgrading and helps in sustainable development in the economy and society. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era)

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19 pages, 684 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Technological Innovation, Product Quality and Upgrading of Manufacturing Value Chain: Empirical Evidence from China

by Xiaolong Gao, Changfei Li, Ehsan Elahi, Mohammad Ilyas Abro and Zhaocai Cui

Sustainability 2023, 15(9), 7289; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15097289 - 27 Apr 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1711

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between enterprise technological innovation, export product quality, and the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. The study is based on panel data from Chinese manufacturing enterprises between 2000 and 2013 and uses a multi-dimensional fixed-effect method to analyze the moderating effect of enterprise export product quality on the relationship between technological innovation and the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. The results show that technological innovation significantly promotes the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. The regression analysis indicates that a 1% increase in enterprise technological innovation leads to a 0.28% increase in the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. Similarly, the study demonstrates that improving the quality of exported products significantly enhances the manufacturing industry’s status in the global value chain. The regression analysis reveals that a 1% increase in the quality of exported products leads to a 0.14% increase in the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. Moreover, the research identifies a threshold value of 0.4438 for the moderating effect of enterprise export product quality on the impact of technological innovation on the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. When the quality of exported products is below the threshold value, it has a strong positive regulatory effect on technological innovation, promoting the upgrading of the manufacturing value chain. However, once the quality of exported products exceeds the threshold value, its regulatory effect becomes insignificant. The study’s findings have important implications for enterprises looking to overcome the “dilemma of scientific and technological innovation” and promote the intelligent development of the manufacturing industry. The research conclusions have strong reference value for promoting the combination of technology innovation and business model innovation in manufacturing enterprises. This will allow for climbing the high-end links of the global value chain and achieving sustainable development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era)

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20 pages, 8503 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Green Technology Solution for Small-World Communication Using Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) and Light Emitting Diode (LED)—Design and Application

by Mohammad Syuhaimi Ab-Rahman, Hadiguna Safnal, Iszan Hana Kaharudin and I-Shyan Hwang

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10894; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710894 - 31 Aug 2022

Viewed by 1291

Abstract

Plastic optical fiber (POF) has become a dominant technology, with potential to be fully utilized in a small-world communication system because it has many advantages over existing systems. Among several high-speed solutions, POF can be considered as one of the most promising technologies because of its attractive features, such as efficiency, user friendly, environmentally friendly, low maintenance and economic metric, compared to silica fiber optics. POF devices are divided into several types based on fabrication techniques and continue to spread to a number of applications that have a high impact in the world of communication today. This paper will discuss the overall POF technology and sustainable solutions for small-world communication from device fabrication, device types, configurations and applications. Discussion will focus on the technologies that have been developed in our laboratory concerning a user-friendly approach, energy efficiency, ease of maintenance and high-performance solution. The performance of our optical splitter is comparable to commercialized devices that are less than 5 dB of insertion loss and 0.53 dB of excess loss. This sustainable solution in high-speed communication is the first reported up to this time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era)

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16 pages, 21564 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Space–Time Effect of Green Total Factor Productivity in Mineral Resources Industry in China: Based on Space–Time Semivariogram and SPVAR Model

by Rui Jiang, Chunxue Liu, Xiaowei Liu and Shuai Zhang

Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8956; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148956 - 21 Jul 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1392

Abstract

Improving green total factor productivity (GTFP) is the key for China’s mineral resources industry to get out of the dilemma of resource depletion and environmental degradation. The Super Slacks-Based Measure (Super-SBM) model with undesirable output is used to calculate the GTFP of China’s mineral resources industry between 2004 and 2019, and the space–time correlation threshold is quantitatively determined by the space–time semivariogram. On this basis, the spatial weight matrix is constructed, and the spatial panel vector autoregression (SPVAR) model is used to quantitatively estimate the space–time impact response among GTFP, import dependence, and R&D investment. The results show that: (1) The maximum range of mineral resources industry GTFP in time and space are 12.28 years and 635.28 km, respectively. Taking the space range as the correlation distance threshold to construct spatial weight matrix improves the accuracy of spatial analysis. (2) The increase in import dependence and R&D investment can effectively improve the GTFP of local and its neighboring provinces. In the long term, an increase in import dependence has a positive impact on R&D investment, and an increase in R&D investment can reduce the import dependence. (3) In the response to impact, the eastern region is greater than the western region, the coastal provinces are greater than the inland provinces, and the provinces close to the impact source are greater than the provinces far away. Therefore, policies to limit resource and energy consumption, pollution, and carbon emissions should be strengthened. The incentive policies should be emphasized differently and adopted for the impact sources and response areas. The R&D investment in the full mineral industry process should be increased to improve the GTFP. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era)

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Review

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26 pages, 5123 KiB

Open AccessReview

Bibliometric Method for Manufacturing Servitization: A Review and Future Research Directions

by Yong Chen, Zhengjie Wu, Wenchao Yi, Bingjia Wang, Jianhua Yao, Zhi Pei and Jiaoliao Chen

Sustainability 2022, 14(14), 8743; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14148743 - 18 Jul 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2434

Abstract

To gain sustainable development, it is a trend that manufacturing companies are change the value chain from manufacturing-centric to service-centric. Therefore, the capability of the manufacturing service is as significant as the production ability of enterprises, which reflects the supply chain management (SCM), flexible production, production efficiency, and other indicators of the enterprises. It is the first paper to discuss the sustainability of service-oriented manufacturing using bibliometric analysis. It derives a detailed review and future outlook on the development of manufacturing servitization, indicating the research directions for future development, and provides a valuable reference for researchers in related directions. The bibliometric analysis discusses countries or regions, research areas, authors, keywords, institutions, and journals based on the literature data from the Web of Science (WoS). The results show that research on manufacturing services has gradually received attention since its inception and has become popular since 2008. The papers published from 2008 to 2021 account for 77.62%. The USA is the most studied country on this topic, followed by China and the UK. The International Journal of Production Research regarding the most quantity of articles, and Beihang University is the most influential institution in this field. The largest amount of articles published in the area of “business and economics”, amounting to 1565 articles. In recent years, the main research areas included “Industry 4.0”, “cloud manufacturing (CMfg)”, “Internet of Things (IoT)”, “big data” and “services innovation”. Finally, “digital and intelligent manufacturing” and “product-service systems” are potential research directions for the future. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Manufacturing Sustainability in the Industry 4.0 Era)

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