Towards Smart and Sustainable Manufacturing - an Overview

On the perspective of sustainability the Smart manufacturing (SM) has the potential to bring fundamental improvements. Technology influences and interacts with the economic dimension (e.g. it allows new business solutions), with the environment (e.g. providing solutions to nature and resource conservation) and with the society (e.g. it supports new living models), besides acting as a powerful tool to give resources for "meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". In other words, it is not possible to look for solutions to the sustainability manufacturing issue without considering technology as an integral component of the development. This paper presents a literature review identifying themes and trends of smart manufacturing and their expected effect on sustainable manufacturing. The findings from the literature survey show potential effect of the smart manufacturing technologies on sustainability.