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Smart manufacturing Smart

manufacturing
and sustainability:
a bibliometric analysis
Saurabh Tiwari, Prakash Chandra Bahuguna and Rajeev Srivastava
School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies,
Dehradun, India Received 14 April 2022
Revised 26 July 2022
Accepted 6 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose – During the past decade, the necessity to integrate manufacturing and sustainability has increased
mainly to reduce the adverse effect on the manufacturing industry, transforming traditional manufacturing
into smart manufacturing by adopting the latest manufacturing technology as part of the Industry 4.0
revolution. Smart manufacturing has piqued the interest of both academics and industry. Manufacturing is a
foundation of products and services required for human health, safety, and well-being in modern society and
from an organizational standpoint. This paper uses bibliometric analysis better to understand the relationship
between smart manufacturing and sustainability scholarship and provide an up-to-date account of current
industry practices.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper used the bibliometric analysis method to analyze and draw
conclusions from 839 articles retrieved from the Scopus database from 1994 to February 2022. The
methodology is divided into four steps: data collection, analysis, visualization, and interpretation. The current
study aims to comprehend smart manufacturing and sustainability scholarship using the bibliometric
R-package and VOSviewer software.
Findings – The study provides fascinating insights that may assist scholars, industry professionals, and top
management in conceptualizing smart manufacturing and sustainability in their organizations. The results
show that the number of publications has significantly increased from 2015 onwards, reaching a maximum of
317 journals in 2021 with an increasing publication annual growth rate of 21.9%. The United Kingdom, India,
the United States of America, Italy, France, Brazil and China were the most productive countries in terms of the
total number of publications. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Cleaner Production,
International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning and Control, Business Strategy and the
Environment Technology in Society, and Benchmarking: An International Journal emerged as the top outlets.
Research limitations/implications – The research in the area of smart manufacturing and sustainability is
underpinned by this study, which aims to understand the trends in this field over the last two decades in terms
of prolific authors, most influential journals, key themes, and the field’s intellectual and social structure.
However, according to the research, this field is still in its early stages of development. As a result, a more in-
depth analysis is required to aid in the development of a better understanding of this new field.
Originality/value – The paper focuses on integrating smart manufacturing and sustainability through
increased interest from 2015 onwards through the literature review. Specific policies should be formulated to
improve the manufacturing sector’s competence. Furthermore, these findings can guide researchers who want
to delve deeper into smart manufacturing and sustainability.
Keywords Smart manufacturing, Sustainability, Sustainable development, Circular economy, Industry 4.0
Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction
Smart manufacturing, also known as intelligent manufacturing, is frequently used to
describe future production, is a term that is frequently used to describe the production of the
future. The number of publications in the field of smart manufacturing is swiftly increasing.
Several publications concentrate on providing exhaustive coverage of the issues influencing
smart manufacturing. Smart manufacturing has piqued the interest of several academicians,
who have published their outcomes in the literature. Thoben et al. (2017) deliberated the core
characteristics of cyber-physical systems and provided a summary of Germany’s Industry Benchmarking: An International
Journal
4.0 initiative and other countries’ manufacturing efforts (Li et al., 2017; Tiwari, 2021). Kang © Emerald Publishing Limited
1463-5771
et al. (2016) appraised the literature on smart manufacturing and recognized technologies DOI 10.1108/BIJ-04-2022-0238
BIJ critical to its advancement (Liu and Xu, 2017; Zhong et al., 2017a, b; Qi and Tao, 2018; Kusiak,
2018). Helu et al. (2016) outlined the importance for data-driven manufacturing decision-
making. Lu et al. (2016) discussed the standards that may affect smart manufacturing
products, systems, and business aspects (Talapatra and Uddin, 2019). O’Donovan et al. (2016)
concentrated on the challenges that data analytics applications face in industry. Instead of
focusing on prescriptive approaches, the authors encouraged for the use of formal
methodologies to develop analytics capability. A case study was used to demonstrate the
methods discussed in their paper. Standards are critical in integrating smart manufacturing
technologies confronted with transformation challenges, some of which were outlined by
Macke et al. (2016). A mobile device-based tool for starting enquiries to support incoming
changes was deliberated. Zhang et al. (2014) provided an overview of technologies such as
cloud computing, the Internet of things, service-oriented solutions, and high-performance
computing. It was suggested that they create a cloud-manufacturing platform based on the
ideas presented in their paper. Shafiq et al. (2015) proposed a framework for engineering
object knowledge depiction that incorporates relevant knowledge and experience. The
framework was shown to be a specialization of a cyber-physical system. Zhong et al. (2017a,
b), deliberated the concept of smart manufacturing objects handled with the Internet of things
and wireless technologies. The behaviour of smart manufacturing objects was studied using
data analytics.
Manufacturing systems rely heavily on information and communication technology. Big
data, Industry 4.0, the Internet of things (IoT), cloud computing, cyber–physical systems
(CPSs), digital twin (DT) (Rahman et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2018, 2019; Wang, 2019; Tao et al.,
2019; Bag et al., 2021; Kusiak, 2018; Davis et al., 2015), and next-generation artificial
intelligence (AI) are all products of the ongoing development of cyber systems and related
intelligent and smart technologies (Evans and Annunziata, 2012; Tao et al., 2014; Lee and Lee,
2015; Pan, 2016). It has been recognised that the underlying drivers and technologies of I4.0
may aid in the transition to more sustainable manufacturing practises, more aligned with the
view of sustainability on its three pillars, economic, social, and environmental, known as the
“triple bottom line.” (Elkington, 2004; Tilling, 2004; Tiwari, 2015), and to realise the circular
economy’s potential (Ghobakhloo, 2020; Bressanelli et al., 2018). Several advanced
manufacturing paradigms have been proposed, based on these concepts, to improve
manufacturing processes and systems with a level of “intelligence” or “smartness.” (Tao et al.,
2019; Thoben et al., 2017; Liu and Xu, 2017; Zhong et al., 2017a, b; Qi and Tao, 2018; Malaga
and Vinodh, 2021; Talapatra et al., 2019).
According to Elkington (1998), sustainability has three pillars: social, economic, and
environmental. These pillars comprise the triple bottom line (TBL), whose goal is to meet the
resource needs of current and future generations without negatively impacting the
environment. According to Stock and Seliger (2016), I4.0 has a lot of potential for
capturing long-term industrial value creation in the TBL. Furthermore, sustainable business
models (SBMs) include the TBL and consider several stakeholders, including the
environment and society at large (Bocken et al., 2014; Talapatra and Gaine, 2019). They
are critical in directing and implementing circular economy (CE) strategies such as
narrowing, slowing, and closing the resource loop to ensure long-term sustainability
(Geissdoerfer et al., 2017), making them important sources of competitive advantage (Bocken
et al., 2014).
Thus, a comprehensive review using an exhaustive Scopus database that does not
compromise on either quality or quantity and has the highest credibility is due. In addition,
the present paper seeks to provide an up-to-date account of Smart Manufacturing and
sustainability that will help future studies to advance the Smart Manufacturing and
sustainability scholarship. With this objective, the present study underpins the research
question:
 R1. What is the existing state of understanding and knowledge available on Smart Smart
Manufacturing and sustainability? manufacturing
R2. What are the publication trends in Smart manufacturing and sustainability in terms
of prolific authors, most influential journals, key themes, and the field’s intellectual
and social structure over the last three decades.
We have organized this study into six sections. In the first section, we provide an overview of
the topic and outline the guiding research questions we identified based on the literature
review. In the second section, we present the methods we have adopted to identify published
literature using Scopus database. In the third and fourth section, we presented the results and
findings of our study in terms of prolific authors, most influential journals, key themes, and
the field’s intellectual and social structure. The fifth section presents the future research
agenda based on our review and analysis. Finally, in the sixth section, we offer the limitation
of this study.

2. Methods
Bibliometric analysis is regarded as an objective approach to investigating patterns
associated with the involved disciplines, journals, authors, institutions, keywords, and
documents in a research field (Bahuguna et al., 2022; Ferreira et al., 2014; Kruggel et al., 2020;
Luther et al., 2020; Mas-Tur et al., 2020; Merediz-Sol
a and Bariviera, 2019; Vanhala et al., 2020;
Chawla and Goyal, 2022). The comprehensive science mapping analysis is applied to
documents extracted from the Scopus database between 1994 and 2022. Bibliometric analysis
is carried out using the R language’s bibliometrix package. The Bibliometrix package is a tool
for bibliometrics and scientometrics quantitative research. This package imports
bibliographic data from the “Scopus” database. This package can also be used for
bibliometric analysis and creating various types of networks. The Shiny user interface for the
Bibliometrix package, Biblioshiny, is used to perform science mapping analysis using the
Bibliometrix package’s functions.
We use performance analyses to look at the productivity and impact of keywords like
smart manufacturing and sustainability in publications and science mappings to look for
research themes in the smart manufacturing and sustainability literature (Noyons et al., 1999).
We begin with a summary of the disciplines involved in smart manufacturing and
sustainability research. The field may be multi- or even interdisciplinary if research can be
attributed to more than one discipline. Next, Journal citation analysis was used to keep track
of the publication outlets’ relevance. The frequency with which journals are cited in another
publication is used in journal co-citation analysis to identify research themes. The purpose of
the author citation analysis was to keep track of the authors’ research productivity (Culnan,
1986). The author’s co-citation analysis purpose was to find common threads in their works.
A co-citation relationship exists when two or more authors are jointly cited in another
publication. As a result, co-citation analysis allows for the discovery of research themes that
are attracting the attention of citing authors (Kang et al., 2021). It also allows for the
establishment of networks between key academics in the field (Rossetto et al., 2018; Silva et al.,
2019). Institution citation analysis was used to track a university’s research productivity
based on the number of citations their smart manufacturing and sustainability publications
generated. An investigation into the relationships between research institutions was
conducted. This research focuses on the hidden faculties of smart manufacturing and
sustainability. Another method for identifying research clusters is to use keyword co-
occurrence analysis. This method aims to look into the frequency of specific keywords being
mentioned together. The citations generated by journal articles and book chapters were
BIJ monitored using document citation analysis to determine their perceived relevance. To find
common themes, researchers used document co-citation analysis. A co-citation relationship
exists when two or more smart manufacturing and sustainability publications (also known as
documents) are jointly cited by another document.

2.1 Search criteria (keywords)

The bibliometric data from the Scopus database relating to the population of all smart
manufacturing and sustainability articles published between 1994 and February 2022 were
collected for the analyses as mentioned above. The main goal is to categorize papers
discussing how smart manufacturing and sustainability are related. The following sets of
keywords were carefully chosen based on the results, with the condition that they are
represented in the search chain. The entire search is dominated by two sets of words, the first
of which is “smart manufacturing” and the second of which is “sustainability.” First, the word
related to “smart manufacturing”, “Intelligent manufacturing”, “smart production”, “smart
factory” and “industry 4.0” has been chosen for the set that signifies smart manufacturing.
Second, the term “Sustainability” was chosen in the string search, and other words for
sustainability include “sustainable business models,” “TBL (triple bottom line),” “circular
economy,” and “green economy.” These terms are widely searched and well-known enough to
be used directly in searches. As identified above, these two sets of keywords are indicated to
the search engine, and these key terms are primarily found in the title or abstract of database
papers we wanted to locate, respectively. An initial search was conducted using the terms
Industry 4.0 OR smart manufacturing OR intelligent manufacturing OR smart production OR
smart factory AND sustainability OR Sustainable business models OR TBL OR circular
economy OR green economy. The terms were determined to appear in the titles, abstracts, or
keywords of the papers. On February 11, 2022, we conducted a search and found one list
containing 839 documents written in English. The search syntax used in the study is detailed
in Table 1.
The advanced search options are used to find a set of keywords that must appear in the
paper’s abstract, keywords, and title methodologies and be limited to the English language. If
necessary, the exact keyword search can be re-run on the Scopus database by simply copying
and pasting the referred syntax in the advanced search option. However, due to the constant
updates on the digital database, the likelihood of the outcome remaining the same is almost
nil. The information was gathered on Sunday, February 11, 2022, at 3 p.m., Indian Standard
Time (IST).

2.2 Selection of database and data collection

The reason for choosing the Scopus database is that it is a widely used and accepted database
for researchers to conduct such type of research. Moreover, it comprises papers from four
fields: Life Sciences, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and Health Sciences. This allows for
research studies in multidisciplinary fields, which is why the Scopus database was chosen for

Source of data collection Search syntax

Search performed on Scopus (Industry 4.0 OR smart manufacturing OR intelligent manufacturing OR

on 11th February 2022 smart production OR smart factory) AND (sustainability OR Sustainable
Website: www.scopus.com business models OR TBL OR circular economy OR green economy) AND
(LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, “j”) OR LIMIT-TO (SRCTYPE, “b”) OR LIMIT-
Table 1. TO (SRCTYPE, “p”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE,“ar”)) AND (LIMIT-
Search syntax TO (SUBJAREA,“BUSI”)) AND (LIMIT-TO (LANGUAGE, “English”))
this research study (Tiwari, 2021; Pranckut_e, 2021). The search for the keywords as Smart
mentioned above in titles and abstracts from Scopus produced 839 documents (excluding manufacturing
conference papers and book chapters) published in the English language between 1994
and 2022.

3. Results
The section presents results concerning the research question mentioned at the end of the
introductory section.

3.1 Sources
Descriptive analysis (see Table 2 below) reports the total number of articles, year-wise growth
pattern, most relevant journals, h index, and source growth. The table shows that the search
produced 839 articles from 2,354 authors published in English between 1994 and 2022
(see Figure 1).
Table 3 and Figure 2 show the year-by-year publication for the last twenty-eight years.
This indicates that the number of publications is increasing at 21.9% annual growth rate. The
number of publications has been steadily increasing in the last two decades. The trend shows
that from 2016 onwards, there are more than 20 publications per year and it will reach to
maximum of 317 publications in 2021. This suggests that the field is still in its early stages,
and that the number of publications will continue to rise in the coming years.
Figure 2 shows the year-wise publication trend. Since 2015 (n10), an evident surge has
been visible in smart manufacturing and sustainability scholarship. A humble number (n10)
has reached 317 articles in 2021.
Figure 3 provides information about the top ten journal articles on smart manufacturing
and sustainability. It is evident from the figure that the Technological Forecasting and Social
Change, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Production Research,
Production Planning and Control, Business Strategy and the Environment are amongst the top
five journals that have published the maximum number of articles.
In addition, to the information provided in Figure 3, Table 4 below provides the details of
the most cited journals. Journal of Management, International Journal of Production
Research, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of Cleaner Production,
International Journal of Production Economics, Production Planning and Control, Journal of
Manufacturing Technology Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change and

Main information about data

Time Horizon 1994:2022

Total Documents 839
Keywords Plus (ID) 2,553
Authors 2,354
Average years from publication 2.55
Average citations per documents 27.68
Average citations per year per document 6.014
Single-authored documents 74
Documents per Author 0.356
Authors per document 2.81
Co-Authors per Documents 3.34
Collaboration Index 2.98 Table 2.
Source(s): Authors’ elaboration Summary of data
BIJ
Data Data Extraction Data Conversion
Collection

Data Analysis Descriptive Document X Network matrix and Mapping

analysis Attribute matrix data reduction matrix

Data
Visualization

Figure 1.
Overview of
methodology Interpretation

Year No. of articles

1994 1
1995 1
1996 1
1999 1
2000 2
2001 1
2002 1
2005 4
2006 2
2008 4
2009 1
2010 7
2011 6
2012 6
2013 8
2014 6
2015 10
2016 20
2017 29
2018 39
2019 91
2020 186
2021 317
Table 3. 2022 95
Year-wise publication Source(s): Author’s own compilation

International Journal of Innovation Management are the top five journals cited most in Smart
Manufacturing and sustainability area.
Figure 4 presents the detail of the journals having a high h-index. For example, six
journals with an h-index of more than 10 are the Journal of Cleaner Production, Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Production Research, International
Journal of Production Economics, Production Planning and Control, and Journal of
Manufacturing Technology Management.
 Smart
manufacturing

Figure 2.
Number of research
paper published
per year

Number of Arcle
JOURNAL OF MANUFACTURING TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION ECONOMICS
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANPOWER
BENCHMARKING
TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY
BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRODUCTION RESEARCH
JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION
TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Figure 3.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 Top relevant journals
Source(s): Author’s own compilation

The analysis was performed to know the most trending journals in this field. Figure 5 shows
that the journal “Journal of Cleaner Production” and “Technological Forecasting and Social
Change” are the most trending journal from 2016. Technological Forecasting and Social
Change (n 5 39), Journals of Cleaner Production (n 5 31), International Journal of Production
Research (n 5 17) are the top three journals that have published the maximum number of
articles as shown in Table 4.

3.2 Most influential authors and keywords

This section provides details related to the most impactful authors. As it is evident from
Figure 6 below, Gunasekaran, A., Gupta, S., Srai, J.S., Bag, S., T., Garza-Reyes, J.A., Tortorella,
BIJ Journals Citation

Journal of Management 1,343

International Journal of Production Research 734
International Journal of Management Reviews 565
Journal of Cleaner Production 524
International Journal of Production Economics 489
Production Planning and Control 480
Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management 416
Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management 373
Technological Forecasting and Social Change 346
Table 4. International Journal of Innovation Management 283
Most cited journals Source(s): Author’s own compilation

Figure 4.
High impact journals

G.L., Ghobakloo, M., Luthra, S., Orzes, G., and Antov, I., are the most influential authors in the
area of Smart manufacturing and sustainability (see Figure 7).
In addition, the following table (see Table 5 below) reports the most frequently cited
articles. The results indicate that the document authored by Wright et al. (2001) in the Journal
of Management, Saberi et al. (2019) in International Journal of Production Research, Renwick
et al. (2013) in International Journal of Management Reviews, Bunse et al. (2011) in Journal of
Cleaner Production, Day (2011) in Journal of Marketing, Garetti and Taisch (2012) in
Production Planning and Control, Dalenogare et al. (2018) in International Journal of
Production Economics and Ghobakhloo (2018) in Journal of Manufacturing Technology
Management, are most seven most cited author whose document citation is more than 400,
that have helped the field to grow.
The most helpful method for understanding the conceptual structure of research done in a
specific field is co-word analysis (Callon et al., 1983). A similar analysis is carried out to
determine the most commonly used words/phrases in the paper title and keyword list. Table 6
 Smart
manufacturing

Figure 5.
Most trending Journals

h-index
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Figure 6.
Authors of high
impact factor
Source(s): Authors’ elaboration using Biblioshiny

lists the most frequently used keywords in the field. The result shows that the word “Industry
4.0” is the most frequently used keyword.
Co–word analysis reveals that “Industry 4.0,” “Sustainable development,” “Industrial
research,” “Supply chain management,” “Decision making,” “Manufacture,” “Industrial
revolution,” and “Internet of Things” are the most frequently used keywords in the paper
titles and abstract.
BIJ

Figure 7.
Most relevant words

Paper Total citations TC per year

WRIGHT PM, 2001, J MANAGE 1,335 60.682

SABERI S, 2019, INT J PROD RES 715 178.75
RENWICK DW, 2013, INT J MANAGE REV 554 55.4
BUNSE K, 2011, J CLEAN PROD 520 43.333
DAY GS, 2011, J MARK 484 40.333
GARETTI M, 2012, PROD PLANN CONTROL 477 43.364
DALENOGARE LS, 2018, INT J PROD ECON 476 95.2
GHOBAKHLOO M, 2018, J MANUF TECHNOL MANAGE 409 81.8
MOEUF A, 2018, INT J PROD RES 386 77.2
SANDERS A, 2016, J IND ENG MANAGE 365 52.143
LI L, 2018, TECHNOL FORECAST SOC CHANGE 343 68.6
DE SOUSA JABBOUR ABL, 2018, TECHNOL FORECAST SOC CHANGE 304 60.8
KIEL D, 2017, INT J INNOV MANAGE 279 46.5
GARUD R, 1995, STRATEGIC MANAGE J 279 9.964
TRACEY M, 1999, J OPER MANAGE 276 11.5
TORTORELLA GL, 2018, INT J PROD RES 262 52.4
HORVTH D, 2019, TECHNOL FORECAST SOC CHANGE 243 60.75
BROWN R, 2017, SMALL BUS ECON 238 39.667
HANNA MD, 2000, INT J OPER PROD MANAGE 237 10.304
Table 5. KINDSTRM D, 2014, J BUS IND MARK 232 25.778
Top cited documents Source(s): Authors’ elaboration

The TreeMap below (Figure 8) highlights the combination of possible keywords,

representing smart manufacturing and sustainability.
Furthermore, an analysis of the trending topics (see Figure 9) reveals the most frequent
words used in the research. For example, the research shows that Industry 4.0, sustainable
development, industrial research, supply chain management, decision making,
manufacturing, the industrial revolution, and the internet of Things are the most used
terms in the research area.
Country-wise analysis (Figure 10) was performed to identify the countries having
maximum contribution as corresponding authors to publish articles related to smart
Words Occurrences
Smart
manufacturing
Industry 4. 0 139
Sustainable development 84
Industrial research 57
Manufacture 51
Supply chains 46
Decision making 44
Supply chain management 39
Design/methodology/approach 34
Competition 33
Industrial revolutions 33
Internet of things 31
Manufacturing 31
Surveys 29
Technology adoption 26
Innovation 24
Industrial economics 23
Technological development 23
Systematic literature review 21
Circular economy 20
Digital transformation 20 Table 6.
Source(s): Authors’ elaboration Most frequent words

Figure 8.
Word tree map

manufacturing and sustainability. This analysis presented the name of countries having
corresponding authors published leading articles in this field. The countries, which
contributed most of the article related to smart manufacturing and sustainability, are from
United Kingdom, India, United States of America, Italy, France, Brazil and China.
The analysis of citations for different countries is done to understand the countries having
maximum numbers of citations in smart manufacturing and sustainability. The USA is in the
top position and has more than 4,495 citations in the last 28 years. United Kingdom is in the
second position and has approximately 2,873 citations. Five countries have more than 1,000
citations. During the analysis of average article citations, it has been found that Switzerland is
at the top with more than 179 average article citations. The details of various countries’
citations along with the average article citations are shown in Table 7.
BIJ Word dynamics of Smart Manufacturing and Sustainability
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0

Figure 9.
The productivity
of keywords
Source(s): Authors’ elaboration using Biblioshiny

Figure 10.
Country-wise article
published

3.2.1 Conceptual, intellectual, and social structure. Density visualization is a robust way of
establishing the strength of interactions among keywords (An and Wu, 2011). A density map
was created using VOSviewer software because VOS viewer software has a robust graphical
user interface (Cobo et al., 2011). Different colours in the keyword co-occurrence heat map of
smart manufacturing and sustainability (see Figure 11) depict different density values.
A higher density yellow colour indicates the more frequently used concept or topic. For
example, “Industry 4.0” and “Sustainability” are in the highest yellow color density; hence,
they are the main keywords. Apart from these two terms, interestingly, relatively, the higher
density yellow colour is also seen on “Big Data,” “Circular Economy,” “Smart
Country Total citations Average article citations
Smart
manufacturing
USA 4,495 93.65
UNITED KINGDOM 2,873 35.04
ITALY 1,637 28.22
BRAZIL 1,294 39.21
FRANCE 1,168 50.78
CHINA 794 18.05
GERMANY 728 29.12
FINLAND 723 45.19
IRAN 543 67.88
SWITZERLAND 537 179.00
INDIA 503 9.31
NETHERLANDS 450 45.00
SINGAPORE 268 67.00
SWEDEN 267 20.54
AUSTRIA 266 44.33
HUNGARY 256 64.00
SPAIN 242 15.12
AUSTRALIA 216 10.80 Table 7.
GREECE 197 39.40 Top-most cited
CANADA 138 13.80 countries

Figure 11.
Keyword
co-occurrence heat map
of smart
manufacturing and
sustainability

Manufacturing,” “Digital Transformation,” and “Digitization.” The key theme in smart

manufacturing and sustainability studies clearly shows the role of Industry 4.0 in
manufacturing (smart manufacturing) and sustainability using digital transformation,
digitization and circular economy.
Keyword co-occurrence is another way of understanding the knowledge structure and
research themes. Based on Figure 12 and Table 8 below and subsequent analysis, five themes
BIJ

Figure 12.
The network of
co-occurring Keywords

Clsuter 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Cluster 5

Industry 4.0 Artificial Competitive Emerging Circular Economy

Intelligence Advantage Economies
Smart Big Data Digital Lean Manufacturing Suatainable
Manufacturing Transformation Development
Technology Smart Factory Digital Lean Production Sustainable
Adoption Technologies Manufacturing
Innovation Internet of Digitization Organizational
Things Prerformance
Digitaliization Cyber physical Manufacturing Production
system Industry Management
Global value chain Sustainability Servitization
Additive Big Data
Table 8. Manufacturing Analytics
The Cluster keywords Source(s): Authors’ elaboration using VOSviewer

or clusters emerge prominently. First, one includes “Industry 4.0,” “Smart Manufacturing,”
“Technology Adoption,” “Innovation,” “Digitalization,” “Global Value Chain” and “Additive
Manufacturing.” The second theme or cluster comprises “Artificial Intelligence,” “Big Data,
“Smart Factory,” “Internet of Things,” “Cyber physical system, “Big Data Analytics” and
“Sustainability.” In the third cluster, “Competitive Advantage,” “Digital Transformation,”
“Digital Technologies,” “Digitization,” “Manufacturing Industry,” and “Servitization” are Smart
the keywords. The fourth cluster, “Emerging Economies,” “Lean Manufacturing,” “Lean manufacturing
Production,” “Organizational Performance,” and “Production Management” is the key theme.
The fifth and the final theme or cluster consists of keywords “Circular Economy.”
“Sustainable Development,” and “Sustainable Manufacturing”.
On analysing these five clusters, we can conclude that there are broadly two streams of
research emerge out. The first stream is prominently at the technological level that links
Industry 4.0 with manufacturing, which includes the use of artificial intelligence, big data, cyber-
physical systems, digital transformation in manufacturing to attain smart manufacturing
through improved performance at both organizational level and production management. The
second one is towards achieving sustainability in manufacturing through circular economy,
sustainable development, and lean manufacturing adoption relevant for achieving
organizations’ environmental performance and adding competitive advantage to firms.

4. Findings
After the embryonic phase, the smart manufacturing and sustainability literature is growing
and drawing attention after 2015 from academics and industry. The study is a significant
addition and extension to the existing literature on smart manufacturing (Garetti and Taisch,
2012; Ghobakhloo, 2018; Fatorachian and Kazemi, 2018; B€ uchi et al., 2020; Machado et al., 2020;
Yadav et al., 2020; Bai et al., 2020). The study supplements and enhances the smart
manufacturing and sustainability literature by identifying prominent authors, the topics, and
the most influential journals in the area. The results reveal that a few authors (e.g. Wright, P.M.,
Saberi, S., Renwick, D.W., Bunse, K., and Day, G.S.) led the most persuasive studies. Smart
Manufacturing and Sustainability scholarship gained momentum from 2015 onwards, as the
trend of all 839 articles indicates that since 2015, scholarly interest in the field has increased to
multi-fold. The following authors contributed the maximum number of papers in the research
area (e.g. Gunasekaran, A., Gupta, S., Srai, J.S., Bag, S., Garza-Reyes, J.A., Tortorella, G.L.,
Ghobakloo, M., Luthra, S.,). Results related to relevant authors, journals, citations, and
affiliations in the field of Smart manufacturing and sustainability reveal that the Technological
Forecasting and Social Change, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of
Production Research, Production Planning and Control, Business Strategy and the Environment
Technology in Society and Benchmarking: An International Journal emerged as the most
influential journals in the field. An analysis of the affiliations and countries indicates that
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, University of Cambridge, Montpellier Business School,
University of Johannesburg, National Institute of Industrial Engineering and the Indian Institute
of Technology Delhi are the most contributing institutions. In addition, the countries, which
contributed most of the article related to smart manufacturing and sustainability, are from
United Kingdom, India, United States of America, Italy, France, Brazil and China. Cluster
analysis reveals that, broadly, the literature on smart manufacturing and sustainability belongs
to two streams of research. The first stream is prominently at the technological level that links
Industry 4.0 with manufacturing, which includes the use of artificial intelligence, big data, cyber-
physical systems, and digital transformation in manufacturing to attain smart manufacturing
through improved performance at both the organizational level and production management.
The second one is towards achieving sustainability in manufacturing through circular economy,
sustainable development, and lean manufacturing adoption relevant for achieving
organizations’ environmental performance and adding competitive advantage to firms.

5. Contributions and implications

This paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge in smart manufacturing and
sustainability by providing composite information about the most impactful authors, most
BIJ relevant and cited journals, most cited articles, emerging keywords, and clusters for the
research. Furthermore, the review contributes to the smart manufacturing and sustainability
literature by identifying the keywords (Industry 4.0, Sustainable development, Circular
economy, sustainable manufacturing, digital transformation, innovation and performance)
that constitute the core area of smart manufacturing and sustainability research and provide
new and likely directions for future research.
Manufacturing is linked to all human activities in modern society and from the
perspective of organizations, and it is a source of products and services that are required for
human health, safety, and well-being. Therefore, it is critical to examine manufacturing
processes in light of sustainability because they are responsible for creating essential
products to the quality of human life and their importance to the global economy. As a result,
the current research aims to combine smart manufacturing and sustainability by
incorporating sustainable manufacturing measures that are needed in the current
industrial revolution. Furthermore, when it comes to smart manufacturing and sustainable
measures, there is a need to establish a framework for both practitioners and scholars. Many
companies appear to be unaware of the potential benefits of the sustainable manufacturing
approach that the manufacturing sector faces. The paper focuses on integrating smart
manufacturing and sustainable business model through increased interest from both
academics and industry professionals which is quite evident from the literature review
regarding increased interest since 2015 onwards and specific policies should be formulated
that attempt to improve the competence of the manufacturing sector. This method enhances
the quality of the environment for future generations while also helping to improve future
business forecasts for the manufacturing sectors.
Additionally, it helps future research by providing comprehensive information regarding
the authors, papers, journals, and possible future research questions.

6. Future research agenda

Currently, the conceptualization of smart manufacturing and sustainability is limited to a few
manufacturing firms and geographies (most studies are in the UK, the USA, India, France,
China and Brazil only). Still, it can be extended to other parts of the world. Drawing from our
review and subsequent analysis, we propose the following research areas.
(1) A big-data-driven system drives smart manufacturing implementation, and
industrial data must be acquired and managed efficiently. To achieve a better
division of labour between humans and intelligent machines, large capital investment
is required, as well as sophisticated and advanced technological devices for massive
data storage, retrieval, processing, and analysis.
(2) There is no reliable definition for sustainable manufacturing practice to develop
sustainability awareness among suppliers, manufacturers, and customers from a
sustainability and manufacturing perspective. A significant gap exists between
industrial and academic research in smart manufacturing and sustainability.
(3) Academics and industry practitioners must collaborate to develop a clear and
comprehensive definition of the relationship between the three levels of sustainability
(society, environment, and economy) and the elements of Industry 4.0. To be accepted
by all economies, including emerging economies, the complex big-data-driven system
of smart, sustainable manufacturing must also be economically viable.
(4) The complexity of the new smart, sustainable manufacturing system must be
reduced in order to increase compatibility with other ecosystems. Social acceptance
must be enhanced by providing proper training to the workforce to effectively apply
 factory 4.0 concepts. The greatest human resistance occurs when workers must work Smart
with robots and accept that robots may perform higher intellectual tasks. manufacturing

7. Limitations
Like any other study, the present study does have a few limitations. First, this review is
comprehensive but not exhaustive. The study draws from the Scopus database. We
recommend that future research use WOS, EBSCO and other databases for comparative and
thorough analysis. Collecting samples from multiple databases would significantly improve
the study. The keywords used could be improved to include more relevant keywords when
querying the database. The study’s findings may be useful to scholars researching smart
manufacturing and sustainability in terms of research landscape and hotspots. Second, we
limited our study to documents published in scholarly journals, excluding dissertations, book
chapters, and books.
Further insight may be gained by including other reliable sources also. Additionally, while
we tried to be reliable and comprehensive, the additional review could be theory-driven.
Finally, these findings can serve as a springboard for researchers to further investigate the
fields of smart manufacturing and sustainability.

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Corresponding author
Saurabh Tiwari can be contacted at: tiwarisaurabht@gmail.com

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