Exploring Organizational Sustainability of Industry 4.0 under the Triple Bottom Line: The Case of a Manufacturing Company

There is an increasing interest in sustainability practices for organizations. Organizations act sustainably when they support the three dimensions \of the triple bottom line. Industry 4.0 (I40) promises to afford organizations to act sustainably. However, few empirical pieces of research targeted t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSustainability Vol. 11; no. 1; p. 36
Main Authors Braccini, Alessio, Margherita, Emanuele
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.01.2019
Subjects
Additive manufacturing
Assembly lines
Case studies
Cloud computing
Company structure
Composite materials
Efficiency
Energy consumption
Environmental monitoring
Factories
Flexibility
Impact analysis
Industry 4.0
Internet of Things
Inventory
Natural resources
Organizations
Robots
Supply chains
Sustainability
Sustainable development
Sustainable practices
Working conditions
Workload
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Summary:There is an increasing interest in sustainability practices for organizations. Organizations act sustainably when they support the three dimensions \of the triple bottom line. Industry 4.0 (I40) promises to afford organizations to act sustainably. However, few empirical pieces of research targeted the impact of I40 on the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Our investigation considered the adoption of I40 in a manufacturing company which we analyzed as a single case study. We describe the level of I40 adoption and the process through which the unit has adopted them. Our case confirms that I40 applications support the triple bottom line through the improvement of productivity and product quality (economic), continuous energy consumption monitoring (environmental), and safer work environment and less intense work-load and job enrichment (social). We contribute to the literature by identifying two trajectories of interaction among the three dimensions of the triple bottom line in the shift from a traditional manufacturing company to a knowledge-intense organization. In the trajectories found, the three dimensions of sustainability influence and reinforce each other.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su11010036