Sustainability

The challenges facing production in the 21st century are multifaceted and complex. In particular, the consequences of global warming have fundamentally changed the conditions for modern production. In dealing with these challenges, the circular economy is seen as having great potential. This article develops a strategy for the successful implementation and realization of the circular economy for a climate-friendly production. For this purpose, a holistic circular product lifecycle is developed, along which circular strategies are systematically identified. The concept is illustrated by a practical example of a smartphone manufacturer.

Due to the high requirements of customers, logistics service providers are getting under pressure to improve their processes more efficiently and economically. In this context, the advancing automation and digitalization in all industrial sectors are producing a multitude of innovative solutions which will help solving the problems mentioned before [1]. The resulting sociotechnical systems created this way are often not in the focus due to the new technology. In this study, a project procedure will be presented as a recommendation which will help to introduce an innovation − in this case especially for an automatic guided vehicle− in consideration of the aspects of socio-technical systems.

Digitalization and sustainability have dominated the media in recent years, but they are rarely thought of together. However, since digitalization poses considerable risks to climate targets due to its high consumption of energy and resources, it is necessary to take measures to make it sustainable and to make good use of its potential, such as increased efficiency. Therefore, Svenja Schulze of the federal environment ministry presented the “Digitalagenda”, which contains 72 measures. In this article, four measures are highlighted and their consequences for companies are worked out.

With industry 4.0 technologies the new demands on production companies can be made manageable. The most common issue is the lack of transparency and efficient structure in intralogistics processes. In various projects of the Mittelstand 4.0 Kompetenzzentrum Chemnitz the use of Auto-ID and assistance systems has shown how this deficiency can be remedied. In one of these a local company improves its transparency and reduced the intralogistic search effort by 20 %.

Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (BC/DLT) have attracted social and scientific attention at least since the success of Bitcoin and Ethereum as so-called cryptocurrencies. This attention leads to multidisciplinary dynamics whose euphoria often leads to a neglect of scientific thoroughness. As one facet, immutability is a core characteristic and often postulated property of the system. However, it is hardly possible to identify an analysis of the counter side, namely the sustainability of this technology. This article deals with different aspects of the sustainability of BC/DLT and relates them to the requirements of BC/DLT.