Increasing challenges for sustainability for manufacturing industry based on global, national and technological initiatives

The world has always been undergoing constant change. For a long time, this change has been mainly shaped by natural evolution, but with increasing growth of economies and population as well as technological development mankind is more and more forced to emphasize sustainability tasks to secure quality of life. Diverse global and regional initiatives with enormous impact on all areas of human living in the field of trade, infrastructure or production are shaping the world with increasing speed. To cope with the growing challenges such as climate change, scarcity of resources or increasing social pressure, a combined sustainability strategy of companies, investors, civil society and the public sector is essential to secure a prosperous future. This keynote introduces supra-regional initiatives of infrastructure and production and outlines approaches to manage related sustainability challenges. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.