Alec Coutroubis-Dimetrios

The study seeks to fulfil the ultimate step of the previous researches on demand chain concepts within manufacturing environments, with a specific focus on sustainability criteria. In this case, New Product Development (NPD), Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing act as effective tools towards production of updated products facilitating both business survivability and customer satisfaction. This paper utilizes a brief overview of the literature studies as a knowledge platform and further investigates the case of two German manufacturing companies using a mixed research method. The outcomes and findings will then be analyzed to examine the study hypothesis towards creation of a comprehensive conceptual framework defining interconnections between NPD and Sustainable Demand Chain Management (SDCM) within global manufacturing domain. The novelty of this research is to develop the results of previous stages of this study including comparison of practices within several manufacturing companies in terms of the linkage between SDCM and NPD projects. This will be completed by creation of the main conceptual framework of this study introducing the new concept called sustainable demand-driven product development (SDPD).

Integration of suitable supply chain system with the industry 4.0 in the face of the evolving sustainability consciousness is of paramount importance to engineering and manufacturing industry at large; this is gradually becoming an irresistible option to manage production effectively and with high efficiency in engineering and manufacturing sector. Industry 4.0 also referred to as “smart factory” enables to address issues such as food safety, security, control, perishability, competitive pressure, demand predictions etc. within the food manufacturing aspects. The paper examines the challenges and opportunities towards the advancement of technology and that of industry 4.0 implications towards sustainability and more closely on sustainable food supply chain environments.

This research study aims to examine and review the key advantages of smart manufacturing to achieve and improve performance within global supply chain environments. In recent years supply chain has been arisen as one of the major areas to gain a competitive edge in manufacturing industries. The current business methodologies of short product life cycle, increased outsourcing, expanding product variety, improved customer focus and improved technologies has led supply chain to be some challenging and complex tasks. Smart Manufacturing has been considered as a successful advancement in industrial revolution featuring resource efficiency, adaptability, agitability with wide application of internet and other innovative engineering technologies integrating of customers and business value processes creating a better manufacturing environment. The research is at its preliminary stages and will aim to examine and evaluate existing literature within the areas of smart and digital manufacturing and compare examples of best practices and methods towards creating a detailed comprehensive and systematic finding of the key research studies. This paper is a literature review which aims to review the benefits of smart manufacturing and its influence to achieve an improved performance in supply chain.