How do different Industry 4.0 technologies support certain Circular Economy practices?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2022-0270 |
| Published date | 04 November 2022 |
| Date | 04 November 2022 |
| Pages | 1220-1251 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information systems,Data management systems,Knowledge management,Knowledge sharing,Management science & operations,Supply chain management,Supply chain information systems,Logistics,Quality management/systems |
| Author | Zhimei Lei,Shanshan Cai,Li Cui,Lin Wu,Yiwei Liu |
How do different Industry 4.0
technologies support certain
Circular Economy practices?
Zhimei Lei and Shanshan Cai
Faculty of Management and Economics,
Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, China
Li Cui
School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, China
Lin Wu
Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, UK, and
Yiwei Liu
School of Business, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Abstract
Purpose –Uncovering the relationship between Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies and circular economy (CE)
practices is critical not only for implementing CE but also for leveraging I4.0 to achieve sustainable
development goals. However, the potential connection between them –especially how different I4.0
technologies may influence various CE practices –remains inadequately researched. The purpose of this study
was to quantitatively explore the impacts of various I4.0 technologies on CE practices.
Design/methodology/approach –A mixed method consisting of a systematic literature review, content
analysis, and social network analysis was adopted. First, 266 articles were selected and mined for contents of
I4.0 technologies and CE practices; 27 I4.0 technologies and 21 CE practices were identified.Second, 62 articles
were found that prove the positive influence of I4.0 technologies on CE practices, and 124 relationships
were identified. Third, based on evidence supporting the link between I4.0 technologies and CE practices, a
two-mode network and two one-mode networks were constructed, and their network density and degree
centrality indicators were analyzed.
Findings –I4.0 technologies have a low application scope and degree for promoting CE. The adoption of a
single I4.0 technology has limited effect on CE practices, and wider benefits can be realized through integrating
I4.0 technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT), additive manufacturing, big data and analytics, and artificial
intelligence (AI) are among the top technologies promoting CE implementation and reduction and recycling
were identified as the main mechanism. The integration of these technologies is the most popular and effective.
Twelve CE practices were identified to be the most widely implemented and supported by I4.0 technologies.
Research limitations/implications –First,only journal articles,reviews, and online publications writtenin
English were selected, excluding articles published in other languages. Therefore, the results obtained only
representa specificgroup of scholars,which may befragmented to a certainextent. Second,because theextraction
ofthe impact of I4.0 onCE mainly relies ona manual literaturereview, this paperonly providesthe statistics ofthe
number of publications involving relationships, while lacking t he weight measurement of relationships.
Originality/value –A comprehensive, quantitative, and visual analysis method was employed to unveil the
current implementation levels of I4.0 technologies and CE practices. Further, it was exploredhow different I4.0
technologies can affect various CE aspects, how different I4.0 technologies are integrated to promote CE
realization, and how various CE practices are implemented simultaneously by I4.0 technologies.
Keywords Industry 4.0 technologies, Technology adoption, Circular economy practices, Social network
analysis
Paper type Research paper
IMDS
123,4
1220
Funding: This study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (72102029),
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DUT21RW102), and Yunnan Fundamental
Research Projects (202201AU070132).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0263-5577.htm
Received 2 May 2022
Revised 11 August 2022
11 September 2022
Accepted 8 October 2022
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 123 No. 4, 2023
pp. 1220-1251
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-05-2022-0270
1. Introduction
Sustainable development, which was proposed and defined by the World Commission on
Environment and Development in 1987, has finally reached a consensus in many countries
after discussion for nearly 35 years. In 2015, 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were
proposed by the member states of the United Nations (UN) in the 2030 Agenda to guide all
countries towards seeking sustainability (Salvia et al., 2019). Research has begun to explore
how to achieve these 17 SDGs. In particular, studies related to circular economy (CE) and
Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies show that a considerable number of SDG targets can be
directly attained by using CE practices, I4.0 technologies, or a combination of both (Schroeder
et al., 2019;El Wali et al., 2021;Belmonte-Urena et al., 2021;Bai et al., 2022;Dantas et al., 2021).
I4.0 technologies can help underpin CE practices (Jabbour et al., 2018) and CE practices can
connect I4.0 technologies and SDGs (Bai et al., 2022). It has been claimed that the
incorporation of I4.0 and CE can achieve sustainability (Rajput and Singh, 2019;Zhou et al.,
2020;Yadav et al., 2020;Dantas et al., 2021). Therefore, the CE–I4.0 relationship is critical for
attempts to achieve SDGs (Dantas et al., 2021). It is thus of top importance to uncover the
complex interactions between different I4.0 technologies and CE practices to facilitate their
adoption, integration, and combination (Zhou et al., 2020;Jabbour et al., 2018).
Several studies have explored the relationships between I4.0 and CE, including the
impacts of I4.0 on CE and mutual actions between them (Piscitelli et al., 2020;Garcia-Mui~
na
et al., 2018;Dantas et al., 2021). For instance, Kouhizadeh et al. (2020) focused on a single I4.0
technology and its impact on CE. Jabbour et al. (2018) and Laskurain-Iturbe et al. (2021)
extended this stream of research by including additional I4.0 technologies. Clearly, the
majority of studies have taken a qualitative approach when exploring how I4.0 technologies
may affect CE. Despite valuable contributions achieved by this approach, scientific,
structured, and quantitative interpretations of the actual relationships between various I4.0
technologies and CE practices (Bl€
omeke et al., 2020) as well as possible integration paths of
I4.0 technologies remain unknown. In fact, most companies still have not fully embraced CE
practices because of various challenges they face, which is further complicated in the era of
I4.0. Meanwhile, the integration of I4.0 and CE is still in its primary stage, and also facing
many challenges. A systematic understanding of the application status of I4.0 technologies in
CE can provide a basis and pathway for expanding the depth and breadth of the application
of I4.0 technologies. Moreover, understanding the current reality of CE practices can also
provide solutions for enterprises to expand the scope of CE with I4.0 support. To achieve
these benefits, the following questions need to be answered urgently:
(1) How many (and which) I4.0 technologies have been applied to how many (and which)
CE practices?
(2) How are different I4.0 technologies supporting and promoting the realization of CE,
and in what way (e.g. a single or an integrated way)?
(3) Which CE behaviors can be simultaneously realized and promoted by one specific
I4.0 technology to save costs for enterprises?
Previous research has not yet provided holistic, systematic, global and quantitative answers
to these questions. To fill this gap in the literature, in this study, a systematic literature review
on the I4.0 technologies and CE practices and their relationships was conducted. In particular,
the positive impact of I4.0 technologies on CE practices was assessed to study how different
I4.0 technologies support the implementation of CE practices. Furthermore, social network
analysis (SNA) was used to visualize and analyze the relationships between I4.0 technologies
and CE practices through a two-mode network and two one-mode networks. The impacts of
I4.0 technologies on CE, the integration of I4.0 technologies and the implementation of various
CE practices are thus quantitatively and visually disclosed.
Industry 4.0
and circular
economy
1221
This study adds to the literature in several important ways: First, a systematic and
comprehensiveliterature review was conducted touncover the promoting effects variousI4.0
technologies have on the implementation of CE. Second, a comprehensive, quantitative, and
visual analysis method was employed to unveil the current implementation levels of I4.0
technologies and CE practices, and to explore how different technologies can affect various
aspects of CE. The remainder of this paperis organized as follows: Section 2 reviews existing
studieson I4.0 technologies,CE practices, and their relationships. In Section3, the meth odology
of this study is introduced, including the identification and selection of publications, the
extraction of I4.0technologies and CE practices as well as their relationships, and the method
for visualizingand analyzing relationships. Section4 shows the analysis and results, whichis
followedby Section 5, which presents thekey findings, a pertinentdiscussion, and conclusions.
2. Literature review
2.1 I4.0 technologies
I4.0 –also known as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”–was derived from the German
federal government in 2011. I4.0 was defined as “a German strategic initiative to take a
pioneering role in industries which are currently revolutionising the manufacturing sector.”
(Xu et al., 2018). I4.0 emphasizes the improvement of industrial capabilities through
reinforcing industry with technological applications and digitalization (Luthra et al., 2020).
A consensus has yet to be established in the literature on how to categorize technologies
related to I4.0 (Laskurain-Iturbe et al., 2021).
Wortmann and Fl€
uchter (2015) emphasized the Internet of Things (IoT) as a subset of I4.0
because IoT-based solutions are often applied by the smart industry, which is widely
discussed in the context of I4.0. IoT was further subdivided into Industrial Internet of Things
(IIoT) and Consumer Internet of Things (CIoT) (Sarc et al., 2019). Rajput and Singh (2019)
argued that I4.0 is a combination of cyber-physical systems (CPS), IoT, and cognitive
computing (CoC). Bl€
omeke et al. (2020) pointed out that CPS form one technical core of I4.0.
Dantas et al. (2021) stated that technologies related to I4.0 include CPS, IoT, big data and
analytics (BD(A)), additive manufacturing (AM), the Internet of Services (IoS), cloud
computing (ClC), augmented reality (AR), systems integration (SI), simulation (SIM),
cybersecurity (CS), and autonomous robots. In addition, digitalization (Dig) and intelligent
robotics (Rob) are also considered as new I4.0 approaches, which have been used to develop
waste management towards CE (Sarc et al., 2019). Gubbi et al. (2013) stated that the IoT
essentially consists of radio frequency identification (RFID) systems and wireless sensor
networks (WSNs).
2.2 CE practices
The concept of CE, which is widely considered as an important means to sustainable
development, attempt s to bring environment protec tion and economic growth into
equilibrium. Its role is increasingly stressed in the context of I4.0 where a multiplicity of
novel technologies is created and adopted (Zhou et al., 2020). CE has been defined by various
means in literature. Kirchherr et al. (2017) gathered and analyzed 114 CE definitions proposed
by various scholars. To better understand the concept, definition, and implementation of CE,
CE is usually translated into concrete practices, actions, or elements. Accordingly, various
“R”frameworks, also known as CE principles, have been used to interpret these practices. For
instance, the 3R framework (i.e. reduce, reuse, and recycle), the 4R framework, the 6R
framework, the 9R framework, and the 10R framework (Bag et al., 2021;Kirchherr et al., 2017).
To avoid confusion caused by terminology, in this paper, CE practices refer to CE principles,
CE actions, and CE elements.
IMDS
123,4
1222
To continue reading
Request your trial