Sustainable Industry 4.0

Sustainability and Industry 4.0 have been dominating debates as the most pressingproblems and challenges for society in general and for engineering in particular. Industry 4.0 contributes as a vision, where new technology plays a key role in the future. As sustainability is such an urgent issue, it would be expected that the vision of Industry 4.0 would include and address sustainability goals as key targets goals. However, this is not the case or at least it is not explicitly.

This paper discusses Sustainability and Industry 4.0 implications from the perspective of engineering education. The aim is to identify which needs for knowledge and competences these two concepts call for in the future to prepare engineering education. Thus, it is important to examine the relation and emergent opportunities for engineers to contribute to a Sustainable Industry 4.0.

This paper points to two major opportunities to combine Sustainability and Industry 4.0, at technological and at competence levels. Industry 4.0 core technologies enable to integrate sustainability strategies throughout the entire supply chain, through a more efficient use of resources and energy. In addition, the competences needed for Sustainability and Industry 4.0 seem to overlap, especially transversal competences such as: problem solving, communication, creativity, leadership, collaboration and lifelong learning.