A Conceptual Definition and Future Directions of Urban Smart Factory for Sustainable Manufacturing

Seyed Mohammad Mehdi Sajadieh, Yoo Ho Son and Sang Do Noh
Additional contact information
Seyed Mohammad Mehdi Sajadieh: Department of Industrial Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon-si 16419, Korea
Yoo Ho Son: Department of Industrial Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon-si 16419, Korea
Sang Do Noh: Department of Industrial Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon-si 16419, Korea

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-22

Abstract: Today, megatrends such as individualization, climate change, emissions, energy, and resource scarcity, urbanization, and human well-being, impact almost every aspect of people’s lives. Transformative impacts on many sectors are inevitable, and manufacturing is not an exception. Many studies have investigated solutions that focus on diverse directions, with urban production being the focus of many research efforts and recent studies concentrating on Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing technologies. This study investigated the integration of smart factory technologies with urban manufacturing as a solution for the aforementioned megatrends. A literature review on related fields, mass personalization, sustainable manufacturing, urban factory, and smart factory was conducted to analyze the benefits, challenges, and correlations. In addition, applications of smart factory technologies in urban production with several case studies are summarized from the literature review. The integration of smart factory technologies and urban manufacturing is proposed as the urban smart factory which has three major characteristics, human-centric, sustainable, and resilient. To the best of the author’s knowledge, no such definition has been proposed before. Practitioners could use the conceptual definition of an urban smart factory presented in this study as a reference model for enhancement of urban production while academics could benefit from the mentioned future research directions.

Keywords: urban production; smart factory; mass personalization; sustainable manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1221/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1221/ (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:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1221-:d:730304

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 ().