A Bibliometric Analysis in Industry 4.0 and Advanced Manufacturing: What about the Sustainable Supply Chain?

Jon Borregan-Alvarado, Izaskun Alvarez-Meaza, Ernesto Cilleruelo-Carrasco and Gaizka Garechana-Anacabe
Additional contact information
Jon Borregan-Alvarado: Focused Improvement (ManEX) Department, Unilever Foods Industrial España, S.L.U. Felipe del Rio Street (unnumbered), 48940 Leioa, Spain
Izaskun Alvarez-Meaza: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Ingeniero Torres Quevedo Square, 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Ernesto Cilleruelo-Carrasco: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Ingeniero Torres Quevedo Square, 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
Gaizka Garechana-Anacabe: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Ingeniero Torres Quevedo Square, 1, 48013 Bilbao, Spain

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-28

Abstract: During the last decade, different concepts, methodologies, and technologies have appeared, evolving industry toward what we know today as the fourth industrial evolution or Industry 4.0 (I4.0) and Advanced Manufacturing (AM). Based on both, Supply Chain (SC) is presented as the relevant process that sets the sustainability of manufacturing and, therefore, is defined as a key term in a sustainable approach to I4.0. However, there are no studies that analyze the evolution of science in the fields of I4.0 and AM together. In order to fill this gap, the aim of this research work is to analyze the tendencies of science research related to I4.0 and AM by conducting a bibliometric and network analysis and also to generate a new contribution through the analysis of scientific trends related to SC and Sustainable Supply Chain (SSC) within this scientific context, for the time span 2010–2019. The results show that the number of publications is growing exponentially and the most active countries are Germany and the U.S., with Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen University being the most productive organization and Tecnologico de Monterrey the most collaborative. The analysis of the scientific terms allows us to conclude that the research field is in a growth phase, generating up to almost 4500 new terms in 2019.

Keywords: Industry 4.0; advanced manufacturing; supply chain; sustainable supply chain; bibliometric analysis; network analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/7840/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/19/7840/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:19:p:7840-:d:417623

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().