Prioritizing implications of Industry-4.0 on the sustainable development goals: A perspective from the analytic hierarchy process in manufacturing operations

The adoption of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is expected to grow exponentially, especially as it offers efficient and costreducing options in an increasingly competitive business environment. The emergent business environment is facing increasing scrutiny and new regulations pertaining to sustainability. Hence, manufacturing in I4.0 is expected to contribute significantly to upping the sustainability quotient of businesses. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) based regime, articulated by the United Nations, provides directions for assessing business performance on the sustainability yardstick. It is therefore imperative to understand and delineate the implications of I4.0 in the attainment of specific SDGs. The current research explores extant literature on this theme along with interaction with expert focus groups, composed of practitioners and researchers. An Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach has been used to identify eight key SDGs relevant and applicable to manufacturing. Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), was applied thereafter, using the Super-Decisions software to understand the relationships between the I4.0 technologies (I4.0T) and the SDGs. The final synthesized outcome from AHP prioritized eight I4.0 building blocks. Digitalization of processes and systems; additive manufacturing; big data analytics; cloud computing and artificial intelligence; and machine language were identified as the top five drivers facilitating sustainable manufacturing. Together they account for 80 percent of the sustainability effort in manufacturing. The study proposes a metric called the Technology Driven Sustainability Index (TDSI) for measuring and tracking the progress of the impact of I4.0 on sustainability in the organization's I4.0 transformation journey.