Industry 4.0 based sustainable manufacturing model for apparel industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Global industrialisation creates many challenges in achieving the balance of sustainability pillars called social, economic and environmental. Manufacturing is the largest subsector of industrialisation. Hence the sustainability of manufacturing greatly affects the sustainability of industrialization. Thus, the research community and industry professionals give attention to the Sustainable Manufacturing (SM) concept. Further, they have realized the significance of technology when focusing on SM. Accordingly, they have aligned the path of achieving SM with the recent manufacturing technology called “Industry 4.0” (I4.0) for more innovative and efficient outcomes. The developed countries and some of the developing countries drive towards the I4.0 concept to achieve SM. However, in terms of the Sri Lankan context, there is no clear evidence to demonstrate the integration of the I4.0 and SM. But there are few studies based on implementing I4.0 for apparel manufacturing in Sri Lanka. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the present status of the application of the I4.0 concept towards achieving SM in apparel manufacturing in Sri Lanka by selecting three large scale apparel manufacturing case studies. This was tested using a model which links the I4.0 pillars and the key opportunities for three dimensions of SM from nine technology pillars observed through previous studies. The findings from the case studies proved that there is a huge gap in the application of I4.0 for SM in the Sri Lankan context.