In the ever-increasing landscape of industry and technology, companies worldwide face an unprecedented challenge. The relentless march of progress, epitomized by the revolution of Industry 4.0, demands adaptation for survival and competitiveness. The integration of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing, and robotics has irrevocably altered manufacturing and supply chain operations. What was initially a quest for augmented quality and production has now become an inexorable pursuit of sustainability. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) 2030 have left no room for exemptions, making sustainability an imperative at the heart of every business strategy. The answer to this pressing challenge lies within the pages of the book, Convergence of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Sustainability. It serves a meticulously curated collection of research that illuminates the intricacies of implementing Industry 4.0 and the ramifications for sustainable supply chains. Our work focuses on the associated challenges and opportunities encountered by the adoption of Industry 4.0 in supply chain management (SCM).

Smart applications are transforming conventional supply chains into digital ones. To compete in today’s competitive market, organizations must utilize the merits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution while being sustainable, lean, and eco-conscious. Smart and Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management in Industry 4.0 closes the gap and provides novel ideas, research, and applications. This book discusses smart and sustainable supply chain management concepts that are analyzed within the Industry 4.0 perspective. It also highlights green systems and smart applications within an Industry 4.0 setting. The book presents the latest technological developments, including disruptive technologies and their impact on smart and sustainable supply chains under the triple bottom line approach. For easy reader comprehension, each chapter will include a case study, a related problem, or a numerical example, as well as the solution. This book is written for academicians, practitioners, PhD students, and researchers involved in this area.

This book explores the impact of industry 4.0 on agricultural supply chains, exploring how changes such as increased digitisation, automation, and the digital value chain, will impact food production globally. At a time when increasing population and environmental degradation puts stress on food supply chains, traditional farming operation models struggle to maintain both sustainability and transparency. Industry 4.0 could lead to digitalised ways of farming and agricultural production processes that will transform the traditional operating and process models to digital, data-intensive methods focusing on analytics and decision-making practices. This book aims to provider the reader with an understanding of the concept of Agriculture 4.0 in relation to supply chain management. Different applications of Agricultural 4.0 supply chains are discussed in relation to their respective advantages and disadvantages. Dr. Stella Despoudi is Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chan Management at Aston University and Adjunct Lecturer in Supply Chain Management at the University of Western Macedonia, Greece. Dr. Konstantina Spanaki is a Lecturer in Information Management at Loughborough University, UK. Dr. Oscar Rodríguez-Espíndola is a Senior lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at Aston University and a member of the Aston CRISIS centre, UK. Dr. Efpraxia Zamani is a Senior Lecturer of Information Systems at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Industrial revolutions have impacted both, manufacturing and service. From the steam engine to digital automated production, the industrial revolutions have conduced significant changes in operations and supply chain management (SCM) processes. Swift changes in manufacturing and service systems have led to phenomenal improvements in productivity. The fast-paced environment brings new challenges and opportunities for the companies that are associated with the adaptation to the new concepts such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber Physical Systems, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cyber security, data analytics, block chain and cloud technology. These emerging technologies facilitated and expedited the birth of Logistics 4.0. Industrial Revolution 4.0 initiatives in SCM has attracted stakeholders’ attentions due to it is ability to empower using a set of technologies together that helps to execute more efficient production and distribution systems. This initiative has been called Logistics 4.0 of the fourth Industrial Revolution in SCM due to its high potential. Connecting entities, machines, physical items and enterprise resources to each other by using sensors, devices and the internet along the supply chains are the main attributes of Logistics 4.0. IoT enables customers to make more suitable and valuable decisions due to the data-driven structure of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. Besides that, the system’s ability of gathering and analyzing information about the environment at any given time and adapting itself to the rapid changes add significant value to the SCM processes. In this peer-reviewed book, experts from all over the world, in the field present a conceptual framework for Logistics 4.0 and provide examples for usage of Industry 4.0 tools in SCM. This book is a work that will be beneficial for both practitioners and students and academicians, as it covers the theoretical framework, on the one hand, and includes examples of practice and real world.

This edited volume presents the research results of the Collaborative Research Center 1026 “Sustainable manufacturing - shaping global value creation”. The book aims at providing a reference guide of sustainable manufacturing for researchers, describing methodologies for development of sustainable manufacturing solutions. The volume is structured in four chapters covering the following topics: sustainable manufacturing technology, sustainable product development, sustainable value creation networks and systematic change towards sustainable manufacturing. The target audience comprises both researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable manufacturing, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain (SC) mapping appeared as one of the critical SC capabilities that could make a striking difference in organizations’ SC performance and improve sustainable operations. Despite its crucial role in responding to SC disruptions, there is a void in the literature on this topic. This book aims to address this gap demonstrating the importance of SC mapping, sustainability in the Industry 4.0 era. The book explores how SC mapping contributes to sustainability from social, economic, and environmental perspectives, the role of SC mapping in upstream, midstream, and downstream SC sustainability, as well as the role of technology advancement and the impact of blockchain and Industry 4.0 in SC mapping. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this edited collection features international authors from a diverse range of disciplines including SC management, operations management, technology and innovation management, and sustainability. The book will be a valuable resource for global scholars, researchers, and upper-level students across operations, SC management, and logistics, as well as engineering and technology management.

​Sustainability advanced to an omnipresent topic among academics and business leaders, while at the same time, a growing share of a firm’s total expenditure accounts for purchased products and materials. Even though suppliers become increasingly important for their buyers with regards to sustainability, academic research still lacks a detailed understanding of how sustainability considerations affect the relationship between buyers and suppliers. Thomas Leppelt contributes to extant sustainability literature across the research disciplines of supply chain management, management and marketing by cross-functionally investigating the effects of sustainability on supplier-buyer relationships from both a supplier and a buyer perspective. The results of in total three academic articles provide valuable insights on how buyers as well as suppliers deal with sustainability upstream and downstream the supply chain. The results indicate that sustainability leaders, in contrast to sustainability followers, intensively invest in sustainable supplier relationship management practices. Moreover, a became evident that the effective marketing of sustainability-related capabilities enhances a supplier’s reputation and can render comparative advantages, if it sends consistent positive signals to the market and if it integrates purchasing and marketing in the context of sustainability.