Industry 4.0 Declaration and its Effects on Sustainability

The Industry 4.0 declaration, published by the German National Academy of Sciences and Engineering in 2013, emphasizes on the digitization of the economy. The digitization of factories is aimed to produce faster, more flexible, and more economical production. Western economies that have lost production to Far East economies aim to make Western factories expand in their own countries to gain competitive advantage. These developments are expected to have direct effects on sustainability. Issues such as the realization of production with renewable energy resources, utilization of less energy and raw materials, displacement of oily rags and white collar employees by robots, and emergence of the same kind of jobs in the economy instead of new ones demanding different skills have been opened to debate in the field of sustainability. In this paper, the effects of Industry 4.0 on sustainability in literature and in the business world are systematically addressed and evaluated. In this context, it is expected that new concepts and issues of sustainability will develop in the dimensions of environment, society, and economy; thus, create new fields of work for researchers